Medieval Treasures from Hildesheim ed. by Peter Barnet, Michael Brandt, and Gerhard Lutz (review)

I was not able to see this splendid-looking exhibition of the medieval treasures from Hildesheim when they were displayed at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York between 17 September 2013 and 5 January 2014. The repair of the cathedral in celebration of the 1200th anniversary of the foundation of Hildesheim as a bishopric enabled the Museum to borrow the cathedral treasures, which had to be moved during the works. It was the good fortune and good planning of those involved from the two institutions that so many treasures were able to be displayed.

The origins of this exhibition lie with Charlemagne, who subdued the pagan Saxons in the late ninth century. Charlemagne’s son, Louis the Pious (778–840), founded the bishopric of Hildesheim in Lower Saxony in 815 and installed the first bishop, Gunthar (reigned 815–34). Hildesheim’s fourth bishop, Alfried (reigned 847–74), built the first cathedral. Three bishops of Hildesheim – Bernward (thirteenth bishop, reigned 993–1022), Godehard (reigned 1022–38), and Bernhard (reigned 1130–53) – were the original patrons of most of the items on display in the exhibition. After Godehard and Bernward were canonised in the twelfth century, Hildesheim became a pilgrimage destination.

Medieval Treasures contains only two chapters. The first, ‘Hildesheim: Centre of Medieval Art’, places the exhibition in its geographical and historical context. Twenty-one figures illustrate the text. They include buildings (St Mary’s Cathedral, St Michael’s Church, and St Godehard’s Church), a portrait of Bishop Bernward in the Precious Gospels, and a 1650 drawing of St Michael’s Church. Two monumental works cast in bronze from Hildesheim were omitted from the exhibition because of their size and weight. The first of these, Bishop Bernward’s doors (figs 12–14), illustrates biblical scenes. Completed about 1015, the doors stand more than fifteen feet high. (They were detached and on display in the museum when I visited Hildesheim in 2009.) The second is Bernward’s column, more than twelve feet high, which depicts twenty-four episodes from the life of Christ.

The second, much longer, chapter, ‘Works from Medieval Hildesheim’, presents forty-eight illustrated objects, ranging in date from the last third of the ninth century (Small Bernward Gospel, cat. 1) to c. 1400 (Burial Cross, cat. 48), arranged in rough chronological order. From the beginning, the Hildesheim bishops accumulated treasures that eventually encompassed intricate works of ivory, enamel, bronze, gold, and wood, having southern Italian or German origins. From these materials and others, a cornucopia of religious objects were fashioned. The items on display included reliquaries, ivory and silver crosiers, the seal of the Cathedral Chapter, and elaborate chalices and patens. Illustrated are leaves from the Bernward Bible, the only complete bible to have survived from the tenth and early eleventh centuries (cat. 5). Particularly fine are three liturgical fans, made from gilded copper and decorated with translucent rock crystal and thought to be used to fan the altar, either symbolically or in reality (cats 17, 18, and 19). One side of the Crosier of Abbot Ekanbald illustrates the catalogue front jacket and the other is at cat. 12. Although the doors and the column were too large to bring, the bronze baptismal font (cat. 38), 95.9 centimetres in diameter, with its image of John the Baptist baptising Christ and other biblical scenes that prefigured or are associated with baptism, was on display. Five crucifixions (cats 8, 10, 23, 24, and 36) show the wide range of artistic skills that could be brought to bear on this one image. The Ringelheim crucifix (cat. 8) contains two stones in a leather pouch and two bone relics: the stones have been documented as originating at the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem and the bones from saints Cosmos and Damian.

Although the exhibition took place in New York, it complements other historical exhibitions held in...