Why had a child’s rear emerged from a chiseled bucket in the church-shaped treasure-reliquary-censer of San Marco? In Venetian sources, this little church in the Procuratie treasury has been known as “ Ecclesiola di San Marco”, or little church of San Marco, since its arrival in Venice, that’s to say, apparently before 1282, when the first treasury inventory was taken.
The object was already archived as “a reliquary encased within a little silver church”. This is undoubtedly the church-like box we are examining: once the Ecclesiola had arrived in the city, it was immediately reworked into a reliquary. This magnificent object became a suitable container for the precious Holy Blood that Venetians brought from Beirut to proclaim the eastern origin of the relic. On that occasion, the Ecclesiola central dome was removed and made removable, thus reinforcing its base through a circular hole of the same diameter as the latter, practiced on the same plate. The base was remade in a metal diaphragm, along the perimeter, on the outside, and then on the top of the outer walls. On the dome and the base of the rebuilt temple appear intertwined monograms M and V, that did not originally belong to the artifact. The statement comes from the absolute diversity of material detectable in parts of the original gilded silver.
The San Marco Treasure church-like box stands on a square plan (cm.23 for 23) with four exedras emerging from its sides, one of which opens the door to two hinges tilt. The width between the top of the apse is semi-circles of 30 cm. The height from the base to the top of the central lantern is 36 centimeters. The interior, formed by the articulated base with four walls and apses, is isolated from the four peripheral domes and vaults from the four corners with an inserted metal plate.
The place of manufacture is uncertain. The upper part, with a five-domed structure, presents both byzantine and western art influences and recalls two specimens preserved at the Museum of the Orthodox Church in Belgrade, imitating a church with five domes and a cubic one in Aachen with a dome. But here in the Ecclesiola upper register of domes, we can also see pyramidal roofs at corners, and this combination is atypical and lacks surviving comparanda. Some studies estimate a duly manufacture in Venice, others in South Italy, and some in Byzantium. Henry Maguire states, “the censer displays the distinctive five-domed cruciform scheme of Byzantium preminent pilgrimage church, the Apostoleion, albeit with additional pyramidal roofs in the corners of the central dome. A striking fact that has escaped previous scholarship on San Marco is that the shapes of the domes, and especially the additional open cupola over the middle dome of the censer, also coincide with that of the outer shells of the domes of San Marco, raised over the lower byzantine in the 1260s. However, the dome shapes may have originated in Islamic Egypt.” (1). According to Fernanda De’ Maffei: “ … the same plant again in the church of the Virgin, in the district Fanaro of Byzantium. Also, in 972, John Zimiskes erected a chapel with four apses as his tomb at Chalke Pyli. Finally, this form is also characterized by the Veljusa monastery church… it is not unusual in Christian and Byzantine art if one remembers that emperor Teophilo (829-842) built-in Byzantium imperial palace with the three apses…. while the shape of domes is present only in Saint John of the Hermits or San Cataldo in Palermo, assuming the South as a place of origin. ”(2). Kalavrezou assumes the work is Byzantine, noting the lack of surviving comparanda (3). Grabar and Gaborit-Chopin describe the foliate ornament and the bulbous shape of the domes, which suggest the impact of Islamic art and, thus, a possible Sicilian provenance (4). Additionally, André Grabar has hypothesized a dependence of the ecclesiola on Sassanian models, considering unusual for the byzantine world a squared base with four exedras (5).
What is of most importance to justify my research, and above all my postulate, is to discover what this late twelfth-century perforated partly gilded silver container in a shape of a five-domed structure, or church-like box, had been created for. Evangelia Hadjitryphonos and Slobodan Curcic describe it as made to partially gilded silver and with a perforated decoration on domed roofs, as well as on corner pyramidal towers and the upper level of the walls, showing drawings of leaves in circular shapes, patterns beneath palm trees with pointed leaves and compositions consisting of palm and flowers. Embossed decorations form the lower level and the import lanes, decorated with floral motifs (stems, wheels, leaves), and divided the walls into two zones.
As only if we can state the box being a reliquary, an incense burner, a lamp, or an artoforion for the preservation of the eucharistic bread can we try to shed light on the symbolic chisels that decorate the perforated domes and the secular iconography of foliate arabesques, fantastic animals, and personifications: lions, griffins, sirens, and centaurs.
These may nowadays be seen as very unusual symbols for liturgical items. Still, they were not in the twelfth century, the most probable period of our silver box making, and which a hermetically educated eye could have unquestionably perceived as Alchemy signs, furthermore back at that time.
Hadjitryphonos and Curcic have identified the use of Ecclesiola: “The rationale for the reuse of the temple-shaped incense burner as a reliquary was likely to highlight the provenance of the relics from the eastern Mediterranean and certify their authenticity. However, although the sacred origins of the artwork are clear, there are still some doubts about the original use of the chapel as a censer, lamp, or tabernacle” (6).
Yet, in many scholars’ milieus, there is opposition to that. According to André Grabar, the little temple box originally had nothing to do with relics and probably served as an incense burner in a secular setting. A similar target of perfume diffuser was assigned by D. Gaborit Chopin, who agreed to read it in a profane sense. However, it must be admitted that the Ecclesiola perforated area is enormous and formed by a flowery and greenery arabesque, and this seems relatively conventional in Christian orthodox ecclesiastic incense burners, as we can see from some ecclesiastic incense burners sharing a similar perforated upper part as well as a church-like structure.
