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Painted Wood Caskets for Saints in Trecento Venice

This contribution deals with six wood caskets, five in Venice, and one in Osor on the island of Cres, which are mainly fragmentarily preserved or illustrated in later sources. These caskets had the same basic function as stone arche, yet, different pre-existing visual and cultural paradigms, such as the celebrated funerary casket of Saint Francis, contributed to their sustained use. The second prototype with great cultural and hagiographical currency particularly in Venice is the shipping crate, the object in which relics and other luxury commodity were brought to Venice from overseas as illustrated in the pictorial legends of Saint Marc.They were preserved by the community in which saints actually lived (Giuliana Collalto, Leone Bembo, Gaudenzius) or to which saints ‘rightfully’ belonged by virtue of the fact that the community has previously designated them as their protectors (Saints Marina, Helena and Secondo). In its simplicity, a wood container was proof of the authenticity of relics, and the initial locus sanctus. Wood caskets thus acquired a cognitive and visual saliency as objects that kept the memory of the “prehistory” of a relic, more fully explained in the translation texts than in the pictorial decoration of caskets themselves.

Venice ; wood caskets ; Venetian saints ; Guliana Collalto ; Leone Bembo ; Gaudenzius ; Saint Francis ; Saint Marina ; Saint Helena ; San Secondo

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