Pallid Corpses in Golden Coffins': Relics, Reliquaries and Art of Relic Cults in the Adriatic Rim

This study examines the artistic aspects of relic culture from the Early Christian to late Medieval period, focusing on the imagery from Dalmatia, Venice and the Veneto regions in order to provide an enhanced understanding of the pervasive artistic force of relic cults during the Middle Ages. It is the primary tenet of this study that the body of the saint and its corporeal existence in relics is underscored in the imagery that was generated by the presence of the relic. Whether contained in the reliquary, depicted on the altarpieces associated with the cult of holy remains, or sculpted on a reliquary shrine, the iconography of the artwork calls a relic-conscious interpretative community to engage in a relic-culture-specific dialogue with the artwork. This study is therefore concerned with relic visibility in reliquaries and their extension into mimetic reliquaries. Furthermore, the figurations of relics are discussed in the context of the historical formation of Dalmatia and the collective memory of the Zadar commune. Venetian relic culture is closely connected with a series of panel paintings by Paolo Veneziano and his circle. These paintings were made to the measure of the relic-conscious interpretative community, and, occasionally, to the measure of the holy cadaver within the painted tomb. A particular emphasis is paid to the shrines of Saint Simeon-one in Venice and the other in Zadar-as bearers of artistic and political meaning after the Fourth Crusade and the rise of the Hungarian Angevin rule in the Eastern Europe and on the eastern shores of the Adriatic Sea. The leitmotif of this study and the rational for a wide scope of the examined artistic media is formulated in Gregory of Tours' late antique literary trope of the broken tomb. Taken as a mode of viewing, this study endeavors to find apertures in relic-bound arts leading to the relics and the meanings they reflect back to the enclosing surface.