About This Artwork

Exhibition, Publication and Ownership Histories

Exhibition, Publication and Ownership Histories

Exhibition History

The Guelph Treasure Exhibition took place in 1930-31 at the following venues: Frankfurt, Städelsches Kunstinstitut; Berlin, Deutsche Gesellschaft; New York, Reinhardt and Goldschmidt Galleries; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Museum of Art (now the Philadelphia Museum of Art); the Cleveland Museum of Art; the Detroit Institute of Arts; The Art Institute of Chicago (March 31st to April 20th, 1931); and San Francisco, The M. H. de Young Museum, cat. 60.

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

Leningrad, State Hermitage Museum, and Moscow, State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Medieval Art from The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Art Institute of Chicago, May 10–July 10, 1990, August 14–October 14, 1990, cat. 34.

The Art Institute of Chicago, Devotion and Splendor: Medieval Art at the Art Institute of Chicago, September 25, 2004-January 3, 2005, cat. 31.

Publication History

G. W. Molanus, Lipsanographia sive Thesaurus sanctarum Reliquiarum Electoralis Brunsvico-Luneburgicus (Hanover, 1697), 30-31.

W. A. Neumann, Der Reliquienschatz des Hauses Braunschweig-Lüneburg (Vienna, 1891), pp. 285-286, no. 58.

The Guelph Treasure shown at the Art Institute of Chicago, March 31st to April 20th, 1931 (Chicago, 1931), p. 61, no. 60.

O von Falke, R. Schmidt, and G. Swarzenski, The Guelph Treasure (Frankfurt am Main, 1930), p. 194, no. 60.

"Chicagoan Buys Objects from the Guelph Treasure," The Art News, 29, 16 (January, 17, 1931), p. 8.

"Chicago," The Art News 29, 29 (April 18, 1931), p. 24.

Bessie Bennett, "Some Ecclesiastical Objects," Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago 25, 6 (September 1931), pp. 78-79.

The Art Institute of Chicago, Annual Report (1961-1962), pp. 14-15.

Patrick M. De Winter, The Sacral Treasures of the Guelphs, Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 72, 1 (March 1985), p. 141, no. 59.

Patrick M. De Winter, Der Welfenschatz: Zeugnis sakraler Kunst des Deutschen Mittelalters (Hanover, 1986), p. 173, no. 59.

A. Shalem, Islam Christianized: Islamic Portable Objects in the Medieval Church Treasuries of the Latin West (Frankfurt am Main and New York, 1996), pp. 183-184.

Andrea Boockman, Die verlorenen Teile des ‘Welfenschatzes’: Eine Übersicht anhand des Reliquienverzeichnisses von 1482 der Stiftskirche St. Blasius in Braunschweig (Göttingen, 1997), p. 143, no. 78.

Ownership History

From the Church of Saint Blaise, Brunswick [according to inventory of relics at Saint Blaise, 1482: see Boockman, 1997, p. 143, no. 78]; remained along with the other treasure objects in possession of Saint Blaise, even after the congregation abolished Catholic service in 1540; given in 1670 by Duke Rudolph August of Brunswick-Lüneburg to his cousin, Johann Friedrich of Hanover (d. 1679), as indemnity for his help in squashing a rebellion in Brunswick [see de Winter, p. 128]; placed in the court chapel of the palace of Leinenschloss at Hanover until 1803 [see Molanus, 1697, 56], when it was transferred to England, where the House of Hanover had ruled since 1714, for safekeeping from threat of Napoleonic invasion [de Winter, 130]; the Dukes of Brunswick-Lüneburg were created electors of Hanover in 1692 by imperial decree, and in 1814, the title of elector of Hanover was raised to that of King by the Congress of Vienna [see de Winter, p. 130]; in 1861, King George V of Hanover (d. 1878) founded the Guelph Museum in Hanover, thereby eliding the treasure from Saint Blaise with the name of one of its earliest founding families, the Guelphs, or Welf in German, Dukes of Saxony in the twelfth-fourteenth centuries [de Winter, p. 13]; in 1867, Hanover was annexed by Prussia, but the former ruling family was allowed to keep the contents of the Guelph Museum, which they immediately transferred to the castle of Cumberland in Gmunden, Austria, and then Penzing Castle near Vienna; in 1869 the former King George, now duke of Cumberland, temporarily entrusted the Treasure to the Österreichisches Museum für Kunst und Industrie, Vienna, before returning it to the ducal castle in Gmunden [de Winter, p. 132]; by descent to Duke Ernst August I (d. 1923) [see Neumann, 1891, pp. 285-286]; by descent to Duke Ernst August II (d. 1953) in 1911, who had the Treasure moved to a bank vault in Switzerland in 1918 for safekeeping [de Winter, p. 132]; in October 1929, the Treasure was sold to a consortium of dealers: Julius Falk Goldschmidt of the firm I. S. Goldscmidt, and Zacharias Max Hackenbroch, Isaak Rosenbaum, and Saemy Rosenbaum of the firm J. Rosenbaum [see De Winter 1985, p. 133]; purchased in 1931 by Mrs. Chauncey (Marion Deering) McCormick (d. 1965) for $10,000 from the Goldschmidt Galleries, NY [according to notes in Registrar’s files]; on loan to the museum as of April 24, 1931; accessioned to the museum in 1962.