About This Artwork

Belgian (Meuse River Valley) or
German (Rhineland)

Crucifix, c. 1150 and later (?)

Gilded copper, enamel
H. 9.5 cm (3 3/4 in.)
Inscription on cross: IH[ESUS] C[HRISTUS]. NAZAREN[US]. REX IUDEORU[M].
Kate S. Buckingham Endowment, 1943.70

Exhibition, Publication and Ownership Histories

Exhibition History

Art Institute of Chicago, Masterpieces of Craftsmanship from Medieval Church Treasuries, 8 October – 30 November, 1942.

South Bend, Indiana, University Art Gallery, University of Notre Dame, Art of the Romanesque, 6 November – 4 December, 1960, cat. 21.

Cologne, Schnütgen-Museum, Rhein und Maas: Kunst und Kultur 800-1400, 14 May – 23 July 1972, and the Königlichen Museen für Kunst und Geschichte, Brussels, 15 September – 31 October 1972, cat. 7.

Art Institute of Chicago, Medieval Decorative Arts from Chicago Collections, 2 October 1985 – 5 January, 1986.

Moscow, State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, "Decorative-Applied Art from Late Antiquity to the Late Gothic Style," 14 May - 14 July, 1990, and the Hermitage Museum, Leningrad, 14 August - 14 October, 1990,cat. 27.

Publication History

Dorothy Odenheimer, “Medieval and Modern Treasures in Enamel,” Chicago Sun (October 18, 1942).

Oswald Goetz, “Medieval Enamels and Metalwork in the Buckingham Collection,” Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago 38, 7 (1944), pp. 107–09, fig. 2.

Meyric R. Rogers, “Decorative Arts,” Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago: Report for the Year 1943 38, 3 (1944), pp. 16–17.

Meyric R. Rogers and Oswald Goetz, Handbook to the Lucy Maud Buckingham Medieval Collection (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1945), pp. 22, 65–66, pl. 31.

Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, Objects of Medieval Art from the Widener Collection (1952), p. 30, no. C–6.

Philippe Verdier, “Un monument inédit de l’art mosan du XIIe siècle,” Revue Belge d’archéologie et d’histoire de l’art 30 (1961), pp. 123, 125, fig. 7.

Philippe Verdier, “Emaux Mosan et Rheno-Mosans dans le collections des Etats-Unis,” Revue Belge d’archeologie et d’histoire l’art 44 (1975), pp. 25–27 (ill.).

Peter Bloch, Romanishce Bronzekruzifixe (Berlin: Deutscher Verlag für Kunstwissenschaft, 1992), pp. 142, 289, 292, no. VII D 10 (ill).

Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, Western Decorative Arts: Medieval, Renaissance, and Historicizing Styles, including Metalworks, Enamels, and Ceramics 1, 1 (Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 15–17.

Christina M. Nielsen, ed., Devotion and Splendor: Medieval Art at the Art Institute of Chicago, Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 30, 2 (2004), p. 35, no. 17.

Ownership History

Richard von Kaufmann, Berlin, before 1917; sold, Paul Cassirer and Hugo Helbing, Berlin, 12 December 1917, lot 470. Harry Fuld (b. 1879 - d. 1932), Frankfurt; by descent to his widow, Lucie Mayer-Fuld (d. 1966), Frankfurt, Berlin, and New York, 1932-1942 [according to incoming shipping receipt in curatorial file]; on loan to museum starting October 17, 1942 [according to incoming receipt in Registrar's file]; sold, through Raphael Stora, to the Art Institute, 1942 [according to incoming shipping receipt, mentioned above].