Thanks to a dedicated crowdfunding campaign and the generosity of 742 donors, Turin’s Civic Museum of Ancient Art has acquired five precious Limoges enamel brackets missing from a unique 13th century casket. The ornaments, believed to have been stolen in the late 18th century, were being sold by a Paris antiques gallery for 50,000 euros, a hefty price tag for a municipal museum to pay to reclaim stolen goods. The crowdfunding campaign launched on March 28, 2024, and when it closed on December 31, it had exceeded its goal, collecting 52,145 euros.

Made of varnished walnut by Limoges goldsmiths in 1220-25, the chest is decorated with medallions of champlevé enamel and embossed, chased, pierced gilded copper. The medallions features scenes of hunting, chivalric motifs, peasants at work and fantastic beasts. The brackets and corners feature vegetal decoration. It is considered one of the greatest masterpieces of 13th century goldsmithing, and it is one of a kind. There is only one other Limoges chest of this size with the medallions and brackets: the heraldic casket of Richard of Cornwall now in the cathedral of Aachen. It was made more than three decades later, however, and has been extensively reworked.

The five small brackets from the back of the chest are decorated with champlevé enamel in shades of blue, green and white. They decorated the back of the chest, placed between the large showpiece medallions. The back of the chest is devoid of all its original ornamentation today, and the acquisition of these five brackets gives the museum the opportunity to restore part of what was stolen from this exceptional piece.

The wooden chest belonged to Cardinal Guala Bicchieri (ca. 1160-1227), the powerful emissary of Pope Innocent III and then Honorius III to the courts of France, England and the Holy Roman Emperor. He was a canon lawyer, graduate of the University of Bologna, the oldest university in the world, and Innocent deployed his considerable diplomatic skills to mediate thorny disputes and to persuade rulers to join in crusades to wrest the Holy Land from Muslim control.

As papal legate to England in 1216, he crowned the child King Henry III, just nine years old when he ascended the throne, accomplishing an investiture sleight of hand when Henry paid homage to Pope Honorius III as his feudal lord and the pope in turn declared that King Henry was his vassal and the cardinal had complete authority to protect the boy king and his kingdom. He also arranged for Henry to declare himself a crusader, thus positioning the rebellious barons that had so bedeviled his father King John and that were still fighting against the crown as enemies of Christianity. Guala Bicchieri’s seal is on the reconfirmation of the Magna Carta that resolved the conflict between Henry and the barons.

Over a lifetime of travel at the courts of Europe, the cardinal collected 80 goldsmith works, 104 liturgical vestments, 70 rings, 130 illuminated manuscripts and legal documents which he carried in the chest, itself a masterpiece of Limoges goldsmithing. His collection of artifacts of Nordic design influenced the Gothic style that spread in northern Italy. Indeed, the church of Saint Andrew of Vercelli in Piedmont, a monastery and church founded by Guala Bicchieri in his hometown in 1219, was one of the first Gothic churches in Italy.

Guala Bicchieri bequeathed his collection, including his travel trunks, to Saint Andrew after his death in 1227. He was buried in Rome initially, but later his remains were transferred to Saint Andrew of Vercelli. The timeline is unclear, but it seems the brackets were removed from the back of the chest in the late 18th century during the Napoleonic wars. At some point, Guala Bicchieri’s bones were placed inside and the casket was removed from public view. Restoration work in the church in 1822 rediscovered it walled up in the presbytery. The city of Turin acquired the chest in 2004.

A metal detectorist has discovered the seal stamp of a 14th century archbishop in a field in West Jutland. The inscription identified its owner as Esger Juul, Archbishop of Lund, who died on January 17th, 1325, so exactly 700 years ago.

The seal it a pointed oval with a central image of St. Francis of Assisi wearing his long, plain robe with his arms raised and hands outstretched. At each of his flanks are fleurs-de-lys lying on their sides. Other seals of Esger Juul also feature prominent fleur-de-lys. It has a suspension loop at the top, indicating the Juul wore it as a pendant from a chain around his neck, an important security measure to keep his legal signature on his person. The inscription reads: “S’ ESGERI FILII NICHOLAI IUUL DE DACIA” which translates to ‘Seal for Esger Son of Nielsen Juul from Denmark’.

Esger Juul’s father Niels was a Jutland nobleman and member of the Danehof (medieval Denmark’s parliament), who ruled for King Eric V of Denmark against Duke Valdemar IV of Schleswig when the latter claimed the island of Als. His son entered the church at a young age, and then followed in his father’s footsteps supporting Eric’s son King Eric VI in his dispute with Jens Grand, who was then Archbishop of Lund. The dispute dragged on for a decade, and in 1299, Esger traveled to Rome, negotiating with papal authorities on behalf of the King to secure the transfer of Jens Grand. He was so successful at mediating the rapprochement between the king of Denmark and the Pope that he was appointed Bishop of Aarhus in 1306 and when the seat was finally vacant in 1310, he was appointed Archbishop of Lund making Esger the head of the Danish church.

Esger traveled extensively in his role as archbishop both inside Denmark and abroad (Vienna, Avignon, Sweden, Germany). That explains why his seal inscription references his Danish nationality. It wouldn’t have been necessary if he’d been a homebody and only had to use his seal locally.

The seal stamp was found on Store Skindbjerg Mark in Dejbjerg parish – between Ringkjøbing and Skjern. This may indicate that Esger Juul’s family originally came from this area. In 1310, Esger Juul donated all his estates in the Skast district to the canons of Ribe, and in 1312 three farms – also in the Skast district – to Ribe Cathedral.

“We don’t know exactly where Esger Juul’s family originates in Jutland, but the seal stamp indicates that he may have had his origins and connection to this area. This part of West Jutland is an area where there has already been quite a lot of activity throughout several historical periods, so it would be fun if Esger Juul could also be linked to this. It confirms how important West Jutland has been in various ways throughout Danish history,” says Michelle Wølch Staffe, archaeologist and museum curator at Archaeology West Jutland.

A series 13th century wall paintings covering seven bays in the apse of Angers Cathedral that have been hidden behind Baroque wooden choir stalls since the 18th century have been documented and photographed for the first time. A team of researchers and conservators from the University of Cambridge’s Hamilton Kerr Institute dedicated years to taking more than 8,000 pictures of the murals and then more years painstakingly stitching them together digitally to create the first complete full-color images of the Gothic masterpieces.

The murals were rediscovered by conservators during work on the bays of the cathedral’s apse in 1980. They had been whitewashes after a fire in 1451, which ironically preserved them from being damaged by the burst of Huguenot iconoclasm which destroyed many other French Gothic painting cycles in 1562. Additional whitewash layers were added in the 18th century and new high choir stalls, known as a boiserie, were added with their dark woodwork extending ten feet up the wall.

In 1984, conservators began removing the whitewash, a challenging process that took a decade to complete because of the restricted space they had to work in — a gap a few feet wide between the back of the wood paneling and the 13th century wall. The conservation uncovered Gothic oil paintings in rich pigments of vermilion, copper green, azurite and lead white. The vibrancy of the colors and the exceptional design quality classify them among the very best, if not THE best murals of their kind from the second half of the 13th century in France.

The murals depict scenes from the life of St. Maurille, the 5th century bishop of Angers whose relics were kept in a shrine dedicated to him in Angers Cathedral’s high altar. According to a 9th century hagiography, after Maurille tried and failed to raise a boy from the dead, he was so ashamed he ran away to Britain, throwing the keys to the cathedral into the ocean. There he sought redemption by doing penance as the king’s humble gardener. For seven years he manually labored while the Angevins looked for him to bring him back home. They finally tracked him down and he returned to France. A fish that had conveniently swallowed the keys was caught on the voyage so Maurille got the cathedral keys back too.

He then tried again to raise the boy from the dead and the second time was the charm. The boy lived again and grew up to become St. René. René’s shrine was under the apse of the cathedral where the murals were painted, and the murals on bays 3-7 are all scenes from this story. Bays 1 and 2 focus on his early life, starting with Maurille’s ordination by St. Martin of Tours in bay 1 and then his first miracle, calling down a fire from heaven to destroy a pagan temple, in bay 2.

None of this has been visible to the public since the 15th century, and the whole picture wasn’t visible the naked eye period because of the incredibly awkward positioning. Photography is even more complicated than eyeballing, because it requires lighting and lenses and angling to be captured.

The location of the paintings renders most of the ideal conditions impossible. As previously mentioned, the paintings are accessed via a narrow gangway with irregular flooring. Due to their size, adequate access to all areas of all paintings is impossible, therefore keeping the camera level and square to the surface was difficult. A regular even pattern of capture is also a problem in changing positions, as is maintaining a constant working distance at all times. This results in varying magnification between shots. For a photograph to cover all areas means that the camera has to be tilted to include some of the areas, thus creating a degree of parallax within some of the images to be stitched. This also means that the distance from the surface, and hence the degree of magnification of the images, varies.

The limited access also compromised the choice of lens. While a long focal length would have been ideal, there was not adequate space available to get far enough back to use one. It was therefore necessary to take a larger number of smaller images while trying to keep magnification consistent. The painted walls curve with a narrow gangway, so it was important to keep the lights reasonably close to the area being photographed. To move the lights too far away risked creating a ‘raking light’ effect which could hamper the stitching. We deliberately used lighting that was battery powered to remove the risk of trailing cables from a potentially already hazardous situation.

Stitching the images could not be achieved automatically, as in some areas the distortions created by the difficulty of the photography were too great for the software (Adobe Photoshop) to cope. Instead, the images were manually stitched, meaning that these images should be regarded as photographic reconstructions rather than accurate, measured photographic records of the paintings. Nonetheless, they allow study of the style, technique and iconography of the originals in a way that has never before been possible.

Read all about these extraordinary paintings and the extraordinary research that revealed them to the world in the Hamilton Kerr Institute Bulletin 10.