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Matter, Materiality and Meaning: Trecento Reliquary Tabernacles Dr Beth Williamson University of Bristol
Matter, Materiality and Meaning:Trecento Reliquary Tabernacles
Dr Beth WilliamsonUniversity of Bristol
Bartolo di Fredi, Reliquary Triptych
London, Private Collection
Tempera with gold leaf on wood, gold and polychromed ivory
35.5 x 46 cm
c. 1370
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Presentation Notes
A private collection in London houses a painted triptych with wings that close over a central, gable-shaped panel. The wings open to show an image of the Annunciation, with the Angel Gabriel on the left wing, and the Virgin Mary on the right. Framing the central panel are thirteen circular apertures that once held relics. In the triangular apex of the triptych’s central panel, there is a painted image of Saint Ansanus, one of the four patron saints of the city of Siena. Below the saint is a pair of ivory panels carved in shallow relief, depicting the Adoration of the Magi on the left, and the Crucifixion on the right.
Bartolo di Fredi, Reliquary Triptych
London, Private Collection
Tempera with gold leaf on wood, gold and polychromed ivory
35.5 x 46 cm
c. 1370
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Presentation Notes
The exterior is painted, but carries no figurative decoration.
Treasures of HeavenCleveland, Baltimore, London, 2011
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This reliquary triptych was exhibited in the 2011 Treasures of Heaven exhibition.
Bartolo di Fredi, Reliquary Triptych
London, Private Collection
Tempera with gold leaf on wood, gold and polychromed ivory
35.5 x 46 cm
c. 1370
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Presentation Notes
It was bought by the present owner from a sale at Christie’s 1994. It had come to Christie’s from another English private collection, and had been virtually unknown before that.
Reliquary tabernacles
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The triptych is one of a group of nine Sienese examples of a similar type: painted wooden panels with relics embedded into their surface; in total there survive five single-panel tabernacles, one wing of a diptych, and three triptychs. I show a few examples here, showing different types. Most tabernacles of this type give the image of the Virgin and Child central prominence.
Lippo Vanni, Reliquary Triptych
Baltimore, Walters Art Museum
Tempera with gold leaf on wood
49.4 x 62 cm
c. 1350-59
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Presentation Notes
So here, for example, the central panel of the triptych in Baltimore – shows the enthroned Virgin and Child (with St Aurea and St John the Baptist).
Sienese, Reliquary frame
Cleveland Museum of Art
Gilded wood, pastiglia, gilded glass, glass cabochons, and relics
63.5 x 50.8 x 25.3 cm
1347
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Likewise, this double-sided tabernacle, now in Cleveland, once had an image of the enthroned Virgin and Child on one side, in gilded glass, paired with a Crucifixion on the other side.
Italian (probably Sienese), Virgin and Child; Annunciation
Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum
Gilded glass
25.1 x 10.5 cm
1347?
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It is virtually certain that it was this gilded glass panel, now in Cambridge, that was once fitted into the centre of the Cleveland frame.
Sienese, Reliquary frame, with gilded glass (photomontage)
Cleveland Museum of Art
Gilded wood, pastiglia, gilded glass, glass cabochons, and relics
63.5 x 50.8 x 25.3 cm
1347
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And this is a mock-up of how the tabernacle would have looked, with the gilded glass image in its centre. (The image of the crucifixion which was fitted into the frame back-to-back with the Virgin and Child – and which was described in 18th-c documents – is now lost.)
Naddo Ceccarelli, Reliquary Tabernacle
Baltimore, Walters Art Museum
Tempera, gold and glass on panel
62.1 x 43.2 x 9.4 cm
c. 1350
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The standing Virgin also appears centrally on the single-paneled tabernacle attributed to Naddo Ceccarelli in Baltimore. (Baltimore, Walters Art Museum 37.1159).
Bartolo di Fredi, Reliquary Triptych
London, Private Collection
Tempera with gold leaf on wood, gold and polychromed ivory
35.5 x 46 cm
c. 1370
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Presentation Notes
While the London tabernacle also represents the Virgin in its central panel it does so in a different way from any of the other objects in the group. The strategy is different materially, in that the London tabernacle is the only one in the group to incorporate imagery of a different media, in the form of the inserted ivory panels. It is also different iconographically, in that the Virgin does not take sole centre stage in the London tabernacle in quite the same way that she does in the others of the group. Instead of appearing isolated in an iconic representation of the enthroned or standing Virgin, removed from any explicit narrative context, she appears in two narrative scenes, in the Adoration of the Magi, and the Crucifixion.
Materiality
Gesta, 2012 – Special Issue ed. Kumler and Lakey
Different Visions, Issue 4
‘Notes From the Field: Materiality’, Art Bulletin, 2013
Caroline Walker BynumChristian Materiality, 2011
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Presentation Notes
‘Materiality’, as a theoretical framework, has come to the fore fairly recently in art historical studies and has arguably had a particular resonance in medieval art history. 2012 was a pivotal year for the concept of materiality in art history. A critical mass of conference sessions and papers dealing with the concept of materiality led to a fascinating spread of publications in the following years. At the College Art Association Annual conference in February 2012 , the International Center of Medieval Art sponsored a session entitled ‘Res et significatio : The Material Sense of Things in the Middle Ages’, which became a special issue of Gesta later that year. Besides that session the 2012 CAA conference also included sessions on ‘The Materiality of Art: Evidence, Interpretation, Theory’.
Bartolo di Fredi, Reliquary Triptych
London, Private Collection
Tempera with gold leaf on wood, gold and polychromed ivory
35.5 x 46 cm
c. 1370
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So, to return to the construction and appearance of the triptych itself: The outer edges of the tabernacle’s central panel were once embedded with relics sealed behind glass or crystal disks, as in other objects of this kind, but now only the hollowed-out apertures, painted blue, remain.
Bartolo di Fredi, Reliquary Triptych
London, Private Collection
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The traces of the transparent disks can be seen in circular areas of damage on the painted surface of the wings. Two of the deep relic cavities retain traces of the original relic-bundles in the shape of small scraps of cloth adhering to the insides of the hollows, but otherwise there is no remaining evidence of the relics that were once housed here.
Bartolo di Fredi, Reliquary Triptych
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It has been suggested that there might logically have been included some relics of Ansanus himself, and such relics were available in Siena at this date. Ansanus himself looks up at the highest relic cavity, above his head, perhaps indicating it as the site of one of his own relics. The iconography of the images in the tabernacle as an ensemble could link directly with a variety of important relics: such as wood from the True Cross (linked with the Crucifixion), or a piece of the Virgin’s veil, linked with either ivory image or indeed with the painted Annunciation. But it would not have been necessary for all – or indeed any – of the relics to be linked directly with the imagery depicted in the triptych. Other tabernacles in the group in which the relics survive include those from a variety of saints, often not linked with the imagery of the tabernacle at all.
Bartolo di Fredi, Reliquary Triptych
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This exceptional object, unique even within this extraordinary group of painted tabernacles, adds low-relief ivory carving to the painted and gilded decoration seen in other examples of the type, embedding a pair of ivory panels into the central panel. It thus represents a significant advance in the development of these objects, beyond the painted tabernacles dated around the 1340s, 1350s and 1360s (such as those we have seen by Naddo Ceccarelli, and Lippo Vanni). The ivories have been identified as French, and probably roughly contemporary with, or a little earlier than, the painted tabernacle. It would seem, from technical examination of the object, and the dimensions of the ivory panels and of the interior frame within which the panels sit, that the ivories were not added to the tabernacle at a later date, altering the original design or obscuring an original image, but that the tabernacle was custom made to house them.
Bartolo di Fredi, Reliquary Triptych
London, Private Collection
Tempera with gold leaf on wood, gold and polychromed ivory
35.5 x 46 cm
c. 1370
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The London tabernacle is an extraordinary, indeed unique, object. However, the development from the notion of a painted reliquary tabernacle to one which incorporates an inserted artifact in a different medium is perhaps not quite so surprising a move as it might seem at first hand. These tabernacles emerge in Siena in the middle of the fourteenth century, at a moment when there appears to have been an interest on the part of Sienese artists and craftsmen (and in fact, more widely, in northern Europe as well) in referencing artistic objects and media of one sort through representations in another medium.
Ugolino di Vieri, Reliquary of the Holy Corporal
Orvieto, Cathedral
Gold, and enamel
1347
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This supreme example of a metalwork and enameled reliquary by a Sienese artist – the Reliquary of the Holy Corporale by Ugolino di Vieri – was destined for the treasury of Orvieto Cathedral. This piece adopts an architectural framework that has been compared with contemporary cathedral facades. Various church inventories of the fourteenth century mention reliquaries shaped in this way. And the fluidity between metalwork and architecture in Central Italy at this time seems to have operated in the other direction also.
Lorenzo MaitaniOrvieto Cathedral, façade, c. 1310-16
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Not only was Sienese goldsmiths’ work highly prized in the context of luxury metalwork goods, but Sienese goldsmiths were also being employed to tackle large-scale, multi-media productions such as the west fronts of some of the Tuscan and Umbrian cathedrals being built at this time. The Sienese goldsmith Lorenzo Maitani (c. 1275–1330) was employed in 1308 to oversee the completion of the façade of Orvieto cathedral, receiving the title of capomaestro in 1310. The relief carvings on the front of the façade have been compared with contemporary metalwork.
Siena, Cathedral Baptistry façade
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The design that was produced for the façade of Siena’s baptistry in the 1330s (though never actually executed precisely in this form) has also been linked with goldsmiths’ work, and been thought to betray the design habits of a metalworker.
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It was in this culture, and in this circle of Sienese artists, that we see the developments that led to the creation of this group of reliquary tabernacles, an evolution in one direction from the small-scale, portable painted diptychs and triptychs that had begun to develop from the thirteenth century, and, in another direction, from the types of reliquaries that had been standard up to that point: primarily decorated boxes or caskets in which the relics were enshrined, hidden away from view. In some senses, then, these reliquary tabernacles can be seen as the middle field in a Venn diagram between small-scale devotional paintings and traditional or earlier forms of reliquaries
German, Portable altar (‘Abdinghof Altar’)
Paderborn, Diozesanmuseum
Copper gilt, bronze gilt, wood, stone, paint
1st quarter of 12th
century
11.8 x 31.1 x 18.5 cm
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In the Late Antique period, when the Christian cult of saints was developing, saints’ relics were most often kept in caskets shaped like sarcophagi, that reflected the shape of the tombs of early Christian martyrs, or in portable altar boxes. In these early reliquary caskets, where the relics themselves were entirely enclosed within the reliquary, and could not normally be seen, the exterior of the reliquary had to speak materially of the splendour of the relics within. Gold and other precious metals were chosen both because they were expensive and valuable, but also because they were thought to be pure and incorruptible, and they could therefore symbolize the incorruptible flesh of the saints.
French?, Purse reliquary of St Stephen
Vienna, Kunstmuseum, Schatzkammer
Gold, rock crystal, precious stones
c. 830
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Jewels, stones, polished crystal or glass, and other inserted decorative objects, were all used to enhance the splendour of the exterior of the object, and to indicate by association the preciousness of the relics enclosed within.
Later in the middle ages, reliquaries began to be fashioned in shapes that reflected more closely the identity of the relics within. A gold and enamel reliquary in the Cathedral treasury at Trier, known to have been there since the tenth century, is sometimes said to be one of a group of celebrated reliquaries and other treasury objects accumulated under Archbishop Egbert of Trier who reigned from 977 to 993. In fact, it may be earlier, and perhaps Ottonian rather than Carolingian (Lasko, Ars Sacra).
‘Body part’, or ‘shaped’ reliquariesNeapolitan, Arm reliquary of St Luke, Paris, Louvre, Silver gilt, enamel, rock crystal, height 48 cm, before 1338
Mosan, Head Reliquary of Pope Alexander, Brussels, Musee Royale, 1145
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These describe visually what lies within. They became widespread in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries with the development of what have been called ‘body part reliquaries’, in the shape of arms, or heads, or other parts of the body. (Fig. $$) Although it is often thought that such reliquaries reflect in a literal way the contents, like the nail reliquary from Trier, in fact there does not always seem to be such an absolutely clear correspondence in the case of these shape reliquaries. Those in the shape of an arm do not necessarily contain arm or hand relics, for example.
German (Trier), Portable Altar of St Andrew
Trierer Domschatz
Silver gilt, precious stones
977/963
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In some cases the association is close, but not absolutely straightforward. In one early body-part reliquary, for instance, the portable altar of St Andrew dating from around the 980s (also from Trier), the relic casket does not in fact contain a foot, despite the golden foot affixed to the casket. Instead it enshrines the sandal of the Apostle Andrew.
Tuscan, Reliquary of the Tooth of Mary Magdalen
New York, Metropolitan Museum
Silver gilt, copper gilt, niello, gilded glass, rock crystal
Gilded glass 14th c Goldsmiths’ work 15th c
55.9 x 23.8 x 20.2 cm
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In the thirteenth century a very important shift took place, as reliquaries more often began to use transparent rock crystal, in panels, or shaped into vessels, that allowed the relics inside to be seen. This began the process of reliquaries being constructed to allow for a visual focus on the objects inside the reliquary, rather than the preciousness of materials on the exterior of the reliquary representing the relics inside. This development has been understood in the context of the increased importance placed upon sight and seeing, theologically and devotionally, during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
Progression: relics invisible to relics on exterior
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The development from hiding to showing is brought to a conclusion in the Sienese tabernacles with which we are concerned, perhaps taking this development one step further. In these reliquary tabernacles, the relics are not just opened up to view inside their reliquaries. In fact, the relics are no longer in any real sense ‘inside’ the reliquary, but are displayed upon the reliquary’s surface: it is almost as though these tabernacles are reliquaries turned inside out. When the tabernacles are open, ready for devotional viewing and use, the surface of the objects display the relics prominently alongside the painted imagery, pastiglia work, inserted ivories or gilded glass, and inserted crystals, glass or jewels.
Pietro Lorenzetti, One side of a double-sided reliquary tabernacle
Settignano, Berenson Colletion
Tempera and gold leaf on panel
61 x 33 cm
1340s
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Another development that takes place within our group of reliquary tabernacles is a greater concentration on variety of materials. The early tabernacles simply added visible relics to a painted surface.
Sienese, Reliquary frame, with gilded glass (photomontage)
Cleveland Museum of Art
Gilded wood, pastiglia, gilded glass, glass cabochons, and relics
63.5 x 50.8 x 25.3 cm
1347
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Others then added a new medium, such as gilded glass, and inserted decorative polished glass.
Tommaso da Modena, Right wing of a Reliquary diptych
Baltimore, Walters Art Museum
Tempera and gold leaf on panel with marble, ceramic, and gilded glass
45.6 x 21 x 2.2 cm
c. 1355–70
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In an object like this one, the wing of a reliquary diptych, the addition of a gilded glass Crucifixion, as well as painted decoration, and inserted precious stones, makes for a clear impression of variety.
The aesthetic and ethical desirability of a variety of material – of Varietas - does seem to have been a factor in both panel paintings for ritual settings, and for reliquary settings, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Paul Binski picks up on the effect of variety of materials in his treatment of the Westminster Retable, the panel painting created in the late thirteenth century for the high altar of Westminster Abbey.
Sainte-Chapelle, Upper Chapel, Tribune
Paris, Île de la cité1240s
Varietas – ‘a reliquary effect’
(See Robert Branner, and Paul Binski, Westminster Abbey and the Plantagenets (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995)
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He also compares the variety of materials presented in the Retable with the combination of materials in the Sainte-Chapelle, the reliquary chapel of the French kings in Paris. There, he argues, the presentation of glass, pseudo-enamel inlays, and small figurative painted compositions was intended to produce a suitable devotional environment for the relics of the Passion, acquired by King Louis IX, and displayed in the Sainte-Chapelle. This presentation of visual and material variety, is, says Binski, following Robert Branner, ‘a reliquary effect’. It seems that medieval patrons found this particular inflection of beauty, an aesthetic that valued variety, inherently suitable for the presentation and display of relics in reliquaries.
Multi-media
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Sienese reliquary tabernacles are particularly insistent in their use of multi-media techniques, combining a variety of different materials and media. When relics are used in the ways that we see in these reliquary tabernacles, embedded within the fabric of the wooden panels, in the positions around a frame where we might previously have expected to see decorative precious stones, or polished glass, or other embellishments, we can see that the visible relics are being used in some ways as another artistic ‘medium’ in themselves. So these are not just ‘multi-media’ objects, but ‘multi-material’ objects, or even ‘multi-matter’ objects. The visible presence of the relics themselves combined with the precious decorative materials to add lustre and charisma to the whole object, and, by extension, to the saint whose cult was being served by the reliquary.
Frames – an intercessory zone? (See Lars Jones, ‘Visio Divina’, in V. Schmidt (ed.), Italian Painting of the
Duecento and Trecento (New Haven/London, 2002): 371-393)
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The positioning of the relics of the saints around the frames of these objects is suggestive in devotional terms also, since it has been proposed that frames are an intercessory zone in images of this period. Therefore it would make sense to have the relics of the saints in this framing, intercessory zone.
Bartolo di Fredi, Reliquary Triptych
London, Private Collection
Tempera with gold leaf on wood, gold and polychromed ivory
35.5 x 46 cm
c. 1370
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The multiplication of media and material in these tabernacles has a number of aspects. There is the visual varietas, discussed above, which has been described in itself as ‘a reliquary effect’. But there is also a further effect to the visual variety. The materials used in these tabernacles often make reference to the kinds of media used in earlier reliquaries — gilded wood standing for fashioned gold, gilded glass standing for enamels, embedded glass standing for jewels — but the materials in the new type of reliquary tabernacles do not strictly simulate the materials in whose place they stand. Rather, they make reference to them, speaking, as it were, in a recognized visual language, but often clearly transforming them by using different materials.
Naddo Ceccarelli, Reliquary Tabernacle
Baltimore, Walters Art Museum
Tempera, gold and glass on panel
62.1 x 43.2 x 9.4 cm
c. 1350
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It has been noted that several of these reliquary tabernacles include an image of the standing Virgin Mary. The tabernacle attributed to Naddo Ceccarelli, in Baltimore, depicts a full-length Virgin Mary as its centrepiece.
Pietro Lorenzetti, One side of a double-sided reliquary tabernacle
Settignano, Berenson Colletion
Tempera and gold leaf on panel
61 x 33 cm
1340s
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So too does the one by PL in the Berenson collection.
Naddo Ceccarelli, Reliquary Tabernacle
Baltimore, Walters Art MuseumTempera, gold and glass on panel
62.1 x 43.2 x 9.4 cm
c. 1350
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The presentation of the standing Virgin Mary was relatively unusual in painting of this date, and it would seem that the inclusion of this iconography was inspired in part by statues that were designed to stand upon altars. The Baltimore tabernacle presents the Virgin set upon a faux-marble ground, so that she appears like a polychrome statue standing on an altar stone.
Naddo Ceccarelli, Reliquary Tabernacle
C. Griffith Mann, ‘Relics, reliquaries and the limitations of trecento painting: Naddo Ceccarelli'sReliquary Tabernacle in the Walters Art Museum’, Word and Image, 22 (2006): 251-59
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(C. Griffith Mann has looked at this question particularly in relation to this object: see his article ‘Relics, reliquaries and the limitations of trecento painting: Naddo Ceccarelli's Reliquary Tabernacle in the Walters Art Museum’, Word and Image, 22 (2006): 251-59)
Nino Pisano,Virgin and Child
Detroit Institute of Arts
Marble, with polychrome and gilt
1350-60
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The kinds of sculptures that have been identified as providing the probable inspiration for these painted images of the standing Virgin include examples like this ivory statue, by Nino Pisano, now in the Detroit Institute of Arts. This is an Italian production itself probably inspired by imported French ivory sculptures that seem to have been in the possession of various cathedral treasures in the fourteenth century,
Ivory, Virgin and Child
Assisi, San Francesco, Treasury
Late 13th c
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such as this one in Assisi.
French, Ivory Tabernacle
Paris, Louvre
282mm (central part) x 235mm (open)
2nd quarter of 14th c
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Ivory tabernacles, like this one in the Louvre in Paris,
French, Tabernacle
Toledo Museum of Art
Ivory; metal (hinges)
294mm x 267mm (open)
Late 13th/early 14th c
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or this in the Toledo Museum of Art might have provided even more potent models for the idea of a painted image of a standing Virgin, in the centre of a painted and embellished triptych.
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These painted tabernacles, then, embody a complex process of material transformation and translation, with material allusions, substitutions, even subterfuges, taking place on many levels.
Reliquary chasse with scenes of the martyrdom of Thomas Becket, c. 1177-80
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The enshrining structure of the reliquary casket
Reliquary chasse with scenes of the martyrdom of Thomas Becket, c. 1177-80
Reliquary frame, Cleveland Museum of Art, 1347
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is translated into the revealing, displaying structure of the tabernacle.
Enshrining/revealing – literary perspectives
• Seeta Chaganti, The Medieval Poetics of the Reliquary: Enshrinement, Inscription, Performance (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008)
• Robyn Malo, Relics and Writing in Late Medieval England (Toronto: U of Toronto Press, 2013)
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(And here I should acknowledge that this is the trajectory in these particular reliquaries, in this time and place. In other areas of Europe, and under other devotional and cultural conditions, reliquaries retained the ‘enshrining’ aesthetic.) Two recent books by literary scholars investigate the poetics and visuality of reliquaries using literary evidence as well as visual and material evidence.
Naddo Ceccarelli, Reliquary Tabernacle
Baltimore, Walters Art Museum
Tempera, gold and glass on panel
62.1 x 43.2 x 9.4 cm
c. 1350
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The standing Virgin also appears centrally on the single-paneled tabernacle attributed to Naddo Ceccarelli in Baltimore. (Baltimore, Walters Art Museum 37.1159).
Bartolo di Fredi, Reliquary Triptych
London, Private Collection
Tempera with gold leaf on wood, gold and polychromed ivory
35.5 x 46 cm
c. 1370
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Following on from having considered certain artistic materials as standing in for other, more expensive or more complex materials, we can turn now to the question of what the ivory panels in the London tabernacle stand in for in terms of form and iconography, as well as materially. The ivory diptych depicts the Enthroned Virgin as part of the left-hand ivory panel, in the scene of the Adoration of the Magi, which is paired with the Crucifixion on the right panel. In the London triptych, the ivory sculpted panels are inserted in the very place where, previously, in the work of Pietro Lorenzetti and Naddo Ceccarelli, a painted standing Virgin, evoking a sculpture, had been depicted.
Bartolo di Fredi, Reliquary Triptych
London, Private Collection
Tempera with gold leaf on wood, gold and polychromed ivory
35.5 x 46 cm
c. 1370
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The ivory panels depict the Virgin as part of two narratives, the Adoration of the Magi and the Crucifixion. Of course these are both Christological scenes, but the place of the Virgin is crucial in both. The first scene makes manifest her identity as Mother of God and also shows forth the Christ Child for the recognition to the Magi at the Epiphany. The Crucifixion itself shows her as ‘Co-redemptrix’, as she swoons in sympathetic agony at the death of her son, fulfilling the prophecy of Simeon at the Presentation of Christ in the Temple: A sword shall pierce your own heart….’ Thus these scenes depict the Virgin as central and active in the drama of human salvation, physically and materially linked with the redeeming body of Christ.
Bartolo di Fredi, Reliquary Triptych
London, Private Collection
Tempera with gold leaf on wood, gold and polychromed ivory
35.5 x 46 cm
c. 1370
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In terms of the ways in which the combined imagery of this tabernacle can be understood, it is necessary to consider the various viewing patterns or trajectories that a user of the object could take around the various sections of the tabernacle. One might consider a ‘progression’ around the tabernacle narratively or chronologically, starting with the Annunciation in the wings, and moving through the Adoration of the Magi in the left ivory and ending with the Crucifixion in the right ivory (all watched over by the depicted St Ansanus, and surrounded by the relics of the other saints). But one might also consider the different viewing possibilities, and devotional prompts, offered by the different materials.
Bartolo di Fredi, Reliquary TriptychThe Ivory
Sarah Guérin, ‘Meaningful Spectacles: Gothic Ivories Staging the Divine’, Art Bulletin, 95 (2013), 53–77
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And so, finally, I would like to make a few observations about the materiality of the inserted ivories that make this tabernacle unique among this group. Not only does the insertion of this carved ivory relief diptych offer varietas, both visual and material, but it seems that the object gains an extra, materially-inflected, charge, dictated by the connotations of the ivory itself. It is often noted, in studies of ivory tabernacles or statues of the Virgin, and in museum catalogue entries, that ivory was understood as a suitable material for representing the Virgin Mary, because of its white colour standing for the Virgin’s purity. This could undoubtedly form one strand of the connotations of ivory. But lately Sarah Guérin has shown that the perceived suitability of ivory as a material for representing the Virgin Mary gained an extra layer on account of the material and ethical status of ivory itself.
