# The Holy Thorn Reliquary > Unknown Parisian goldsmith, Valois court - Sources vary within a c. 1390-1410 window: Google Arts & Culture (British Museum partner content) gives 'before 1397'; the Wikipedia synthesis of Tait and Cherry gives 'probably in the 1390s'; Cherry's 2010 monograph title dates it '1400-10'. This record uses c. 1400-1410 as the commonly cited range and flags the spread for the editor. > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/unknown-parisian-goldsmith-valois-court/holy-thorn-reliquary-waddesdon/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-08-08 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Unknown Parisian goldsmith, Valois court - **Date:** Sources vary within a c. 1390-1410 window: Google Arts & Culture (British Museum partner content) gives 'before 1397'; the Wikipedia synthesis of Tait and Cherry gives 'probably in the 1390s'; Cherry's 2010 monograph title dates it '1400-10'. This record uses c. 1400-1410 as the commonly cited range and flags the spread for the editor. - **Medium:** Gold (used throughout the structural framework, not just the applied decoration), email en ronde bosse (enamel in the round) over cast gold figures, rock crystal, pearls, rubies, sapphires - **Dimensions:** Just over 30 cm high (one source gives 30.5 x 15 x 7 cm); weight 1.4 kg - **Object type:** Goldsmith's work - **Period:** Late medieval, French, Valois court, c. 1400 - **Current location:** British Museum, London, Room 2A (Waddesdon Bequest Gallery) - **Attribution:** unknown ## Summary A gold reliquary just over 30 centimetres high, made in Paris around 1400-1410 to hold a single thorn believed to be from the Crown of Thorns, and one of the finest surviving examples of email en ronde bosse, enamel in the round, at the height of its brief technical peak. Heraldic plaques on its base carry the arms of Jean, duc de Berry, though the piece appears in none of his own surviving inventories.It passed into the Habsburg Imperial Treasury in Vienna by 1544 and stayed there for over three centuries, until the Vienna dealer Salomon Weininger secretly substituted a copy for the original sometime between 1863 and 1872 and sold the genuine piece, which reached Baron Anselm von Rothschild and then his son Ferdinand, who bequeathed it to the British Museum in 1898 as part of the roughly 300-object Waddesdon Bequest. For decades afterward the London reliquary and the Vienna forgery coexisted, each institution uncertain of its own object's status, until scholarship beginning with Joseph Destree in 1927 established which was which.The reliquary's own authenticity as a c. 1400 goldsmith's masterpiece is now settled. Its maker is not: unsigned, unmarked, and the subject of one disputed and largely unaccepted attribution. What the thorn inside it actually is remains, as it always has been, a separate question of faith rather than of goldsmith's craft. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **c. 1400-1410** Unknown Parisian goldsmith, Valois court `[documented]` (origin) Made in Paris for the Valois court milieu; heraldic plaques on the base bear the arms of Jean, duc de Berry. The reliquary itself is the primary evidence for its own attribution; no contract or commission document survives. - **c. 1400-1410-1416** Jean, duc de Berry (attributed, by heraldry) `[disputed]` (ownership (attributed)) The heraldic arms on the base are the sole evidence for Berry's ownership. The object does not appear, under any matching description, in either of his two surviving detailed inventories, 1401-1403 or 1413-1416 (the year of his death). One inventory entry for 'a thorn in a large gold jewel' has been proposed as a possible match but is dated after 1401, in tension with the date suggested by the heraldry. - **1416-1544** Unknown `[unknown]` (gap) No owner or location is documented for this period. The reliquary next surfaces in an inventory belonging to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, most plausibly having passed through the Valois dukes of Burgundy, who inherited much of Berry's collection, but this route is inferred, not documented. - **1544-1860s** Habsburg Imperial Treasury / Ecclesiastical Treasury (Geistliche Schatzkammer), Vienna `[documented]` (ownership) Recorded in the 1544 inventory of Charles V and repeatedly thereafter, including continuously in Schatzkammer inventories from 1677 onward. By the early twentieth century, institutional confidence in the object's medieval date had nonetheless eroded: a transfer-inventory note and the 1909 Treasury guide both mis-dated it to the nineteenth century. - **1863-1872** Salomon Weininger workshop, Vienna (theft by substitution) `[documented]` (forgery and substitution) Given access to the Ecclesiastical Treasury's holdings for restoration, Weininger's workshop produced a close copy and secretly substituted it for the original, retaining and selling the genuine reliquary. The dating of 1863-1872 is fixed by Weininger's 1863 release from an earlier prison term and by the original's documented appearance in Anselm von Rothschild's 1872 catalogue addendum. The caster is identified from 1877 trial testimony as Karl Kuthmayer; the enamelling is attributed to Simon Grunwald or Karl Bender. - **by 1872-1874** Baron Anselm von Rothschild, Vienna `[documented]` (acquisition) Listed as item 607 in a published 1872 addendum to the catalogue of Anselm von Rothschild's art collection, which fixes the terminus ante quem for his acquisition. Court records from Weininger's 1877 trial place Weininger in business dealings with Rothschild, via the dealer Georg Plach, before 1874; whether the reliquary itself passed through this specific channel is not established. A contemporary court report states that Rothschild was aware Weininger dealt professionally in forged antiques. - **1874-1898** Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild, Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire `[documented]` (inheritance) Inherited on Anselm von Rothschild's death in 1874, along with the rest of his father's collection. - **1898-present** British Museum, London (Waddesdon Bequest) `[documented]` (bequest) Bequeathed on Ferdinand de Rothschild's death in December 1898; received by the Museum in 1899 as part of the roughly 300-object Waddesdon Bequest. At the time of accession its origins were 'completely lost' and it was catalogued as 'Spanish, 16th Century.' The Bequest's binding terms require the whole collection to be kept together, in a dedicated room, in perpetuity, and forbid any part of it leaving the Museum. - **1927-1959 (per secondary sources, unverified in this research pass)** British Museum (identity confirmed) `[documented]` (authentication) Joseph Destree published the first identification of the London reliquary as the genuine object recorded in the old Vienna inventories, and of the Vienna piece as Weininger's copy, in a 1927 Connoisseur essay. Multiple secondary sources, not independently verified here against a primary account, state the matter was finally settled in 1959 when the Vienna copy was brought to London and compared by a panel of British Museum, V&A and Kunsthistorisches Museum experts. ## Open questions - Who made it? No goldsmith is named or signed on the object. The one scholarly proposal, Rennequin de Harlem, is described by a Kunsthistorisches Museum curator as generally ignored in the literature and is not accepted by Hugh Tait's standard 1986 catalogue. - Was it made for Jean de Berry directly, or acquired or appropriated by him after being made for someone else? His arms appear on the object, but it does not appear in either of his two surviving detailed inventories (1401-1403 and 1413-1416). - Where was the reliquary between Jean de Berry's death in 1416 and its first documented Habsburg appearance in a 1544 inventory of Charles V? No owner is recorded for this gap of well over a century. - What was the second object once fixed behind the now-missing panel on the reliquary's rear doors, proposed as possibly a Veil of Veronica image? It is lost and undescribed in the sources consulted. - Is the armed figure on the reverse Saint Michael, as Tait 1986 and Eikelmann identify him, or Saint George, as the historic Vienna Ecclesiastical Treasury inventories describe the same figure? Named scholars disagree and this record has not resolved it. - What exactly happened in 1959? Multiple secondary sources describe a side-by-side comparison in London by experts from the British Museum, the V&A and the Kunsthistorisches Museum that settled the authenticity question, but this record could not verify the date, the individuals involved, or the technical methods used against a primary or first-rank scholarly source. - How did Salomon Weininger obtain access to sell the genuine reliquary, and did he sell it to Anselm von Rothschild directly or through an intermediary dealer? A 2014 Kunsthistorisches Museum study states this 'cannot be ascertained' from the surviving 1877 trial records. ## Sources - [1] Wikipedia, 'Holy Thorn Reliquary'. Tertiary source, consolidating Tait 1986 and Cherry 2010 among others; flagged for replacement with those primary catalogues and with the British Museum's own online collection record, which could not be accessed directly in this research pass (britishmuseum.org returned HTTP 403 to automated fetch; wb.britishmuseum.org returned a certificate error). - [2] Wikipedia, 'Waddesdon Bequest', for the terms of Ferdinand de Rothschild's 1898 will and the Bequest's display history through Rooms 40, the North Wing, 45 and 2A. Tertiary source. - [3] Columbia University, 'Treasures of Heaven' project, 'The Holy Thorn Reliquary', for the Jean de Berry inventory detail and the theological reading of the Last Judgment programme in relation to the relic. Academic project page, secondary source. - [4] Google Arts & Culture (British Museum partner content), 'Holy Thorn Reliquary of Jean, duc de Berry'. Secondary source republishing museum-derived description; used for dimensions and iconography cross-check. - [5] Wikipedia, 'Ronde-bosse', for the technique's origins, development and the roster of major c. 1400 survivals (Goldenes Rossl, Dunstable Swan Jewel, Montalto Reliquary). Tertiary source. - [6] Paulus Rainer (curator, Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien), article on Salomon Weininger's forgeries in the Vienna Ecclesiastical Treasury (Part 2), Silver Society of Canada Journal, Volume 17, 2014, pp. 70-83. The most rigorous single source consulted: names the forger's workshop artisans, dates the substitution to 1863-1872, cites Destree 1927 and the Eikelmann/Rennequin de Harlem attribution and its rejection by Tait 1986, and identifies the Michael/George iconographic disagreement. Primary scholarly article, read in full. - [7] Wikimedia Commons, Category:Holy Thorn Reliquary (London), used to identify and verify the licence and named photographer of every image entry in this record via the Commons API extmetadata (LicenseShortName field). --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.