Stauroteca
Reliquary cross
Holy Cross with dominican saints
catalan goldsmith
15th century
silver
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The cross corserves at the crossing of two arms the relic of the true cross of Jesus, protected by a crystal.
Completely covered in embossed filigred silver it presents on one side, at the ends of the vertical arms, the relief figures of the Virgin and Magdalene and Saint Dominic and Saint Peter the Martirer on the horizontal arm.
On the back, the figure of Saint Catherine of Siena occupy the middle part of the cross, while the vertical end depicts Saint John the Evangelist and a Bishop (maybe the same customer), while on the horizontal arm of Saint Thomas Aquinas and an unidentified Saint.
The presence of Dominican Saints induces to confer the commissioning of the elegnat reliquary to the Dominican Bishop Antonio de Carleno, who ruled the diocese from 1449 to 1460, and then within that chronology must be running the creation of that work, qualified among the top works of Aragonese goldsmith in that territory.
