ENGLISH, NOTTINGHAM, 15TH CENTURY

John the Baptist was beheaded on Herod's orders. The present relief depicts the relic of John's head, which was kept in Amiens Cathedral. Doubling as a halo, the charger may have been incorporated into a rectangular relief, such as an example in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (inv. no. 13.124), which has a similar charger standing against a flowering meadow, an evocation of Paradise.