Leseprobe

24 Polychromed Silver Bust Reliquaries The Reliquary of Saint Ursula The reliquary of Saint Ursula (fig. 1) is a complex, multi material artwork in the form of a gilded silver bust with polychromed neck and face, 6 produced in the Rhine region in the early fifteenth century. On the head is a gilded silver crown with false gems, pearls, and enamels. On the bust, a decoration of lapislazuli can be seen: it was added in the twentieth century during a restoration intervention to cover and hide a shrine to store relics. The surface of the bust is chiselled. On the base, plaques with basse-taille enamels 7 of French production (Parisian school by Jean Pucelle) are applied. Both the alloy and the polychromy of the flesh were examined. As for the alloy, the substrate of polychromy, a sample was picked out, embedded in resin and analysed with SEM-EDS. The quantitative analyses show that the alloy is made of 95.9 % of silver and 4.1 % of copper. The fragment shows high porosity and presence of mercury, the latter probably coming from the surrounding gilded areas, although the fragment comes from the painted section of the bust. The stratigraphy of the polychromy was also examined by taking a sample and embed- ding it in resin. The combination of optical microscope in visible (fig. 2) and UV light, SEM- EDS and FTIR analyses shows the presence of three different layers, with the same compo- sition of lead white and vermillion. The first upper layer (10– 15 µm thickness) and the second one (around 20 µm) seem to be very similar, with the same grain size of lead white, Fig. 1  Reliquary bust of Saint Ursula , French production, first half of the 15th century, embossed, chiseled painted and gilded silver, enamels, pearls, stones, glass beads, h. 42.4 cm, Castiglion Fiorentino, Pinacoteca Comunale Fig. 2  Cross-section of a sample from Saint Ursula , with three overlapping layers with the same composition (lead white with some particles of vermillion)