ATTRIBUTED TO THE CHAPITRE WORKSHOP, LIMOGES, CIRCA 1190

This pair of plaques comes from Limoges, which supplied churches in Western Europe with enamelled book-covers, shrines, and other sacred items from the middle of the twelfth century onwards. These plaques would have originally formed the two ends of a casket, perhaps used as a reliquary, and show a pair of male saints, each standing under an arch topped by an architectural finial. They are entirely typical of Limoges enamels from the second half of the twelfth century, with their prescriptive iconography and champlevé enamel figures, placed on an engraved vermiculé ground. This pair, however, has been identified by M. M. Gauthier, the doyenne of Limoges enamels, as belonging to a particular group, executed by the so-called chapitre workshop. Other examples attributed to this workshop include a complete casket in the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore and a single plaque in the Lázaro Galdiano Foundation, Madrid, as well as one plaque formerly in the Ernest Brummer collection (Gauthier, op. cit., 180-182). The group shows many profound similarities, for example in the idiosyncratic depiction of the hair, the arrangement of both figures' drapery, the design of the architectural finials and even in the placement of the vermiculé engravings.