Fleur-de-lis crown

In the Middle Ages, the practice of embellishing statues and reliquaries with jewelry and other accessories was very common, and it is precisely because of this that a significant cache of non-religious jewelry has survived. Crowns figure among the most frequent accessories in the context of this devotional practice, and the current example was placed on the head of the famous Madonna di Acuto, a wooden masterpiece from the Roman context preserved in Palazzo Venezia (inv. 6964) and dated by the most recent studies to between the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries (Fachechi 2011, pp. 71–74, n. 1). Although in photographs from the 1920s the crown is still on the head of the Virgin (Hermanin 1920–1921; Riccardi 2021, p. 430), on being acquired by the museum the crown was removed and placed in storage. The crown is an example of the so-called fleur-de-lis type, which was very popular between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries, both in secular and sacred contexts (Lightbown 1992, pp. 128–131). Crowns of this type sometimes have a fixed structure or, as in this case, may be composed of detachable elements hinged together. A fourteenth-century fleur-de-lis crown with a fixed structure is placed on the head of the bust of Saint Ursula in the Pinacoteca Comunale in Castiglion Fiorentino, a reliquary attributed to a Transalpine goldsmith who was active between the fourth or fifth decade of the fourteenth century (Torriti 2010); another with removable elements, dating from the end of the fourteenth century, is the golden chessboard in the reliquary of Saint John the Baptist in the church of San Silvestro in Capite in Rome (Montevecchi 2019, pp. 363-366). On the other hand, the fleur-de-lis crown with removable elements of the bust reliquary of Saint Agatha in Catania cathedral, a masterpiece of the Sienese goldsmith Giovanni di Bartolo made in Avignon in 1376, is attributable to a goldsmith who was active between the late fourteenth century and the beginning of the fifteenth century (Tomasi 2014). As for the crown of the Madonna of Acuto, there are very interesting parallels with the crown at the Museum of Sacred Art in Zadar (Jakšić 2012). Found inside the Zadar reliquary case of Saint Simeon, scholars have tended to identify it as the crown commissioned by Queen Elizabeth of Hungary (†1387), wife of King Louis I of Hungary and Croatia. Just like the crown of the Virgin of Acuto, the Zadar crown also has cast pins equipped with floral ends with the function of securing the hinged segments together. The style of using cast floral elements alternating with large lilies evokes goldsmithery from the Veneto–Adriatic area. This can also be seen in the fastigium, which is purposefully made to look like a crown, of the reliquary of Saint Gualtiero in the church of San Marco in Servigliano, a work attributed to a goldsmith from the Marches–Veneto region active in 1403 (Montevecchi 2006, especially pp. 50–53). Although the Acuto crown has been dated to the second half of the thirteenth century (Hermanin 1945, p. 359), the descriptive details of the fleurs-de-lis, as well as the presence of more recent settings (which are comparable to those on the bust reliquary of Saint Flavian in Montefiascone cathedral, Cioni 1998, pp. 666–671) might lead one to date its execution to the second half of the fifteenth century, in a central Italian workshop influenced by Adriatic elements (see especially the fastigium) and Naples (see the type of fleur-de-lis).
The verso of the crown still displays Roman numerals indicating how the tiara was to be assembled, which was typical in a goldsmith’s workshop with some experience in making large-scale jewelry also intended for sale.

Giampaolo Distefano

Entry published on 12 February 2025

There is evidence of the loss of some of the elements of the fastigium as well as the loss of some of the glass elements.

Each crown element bears the Roman numerals “I,” “II,” “III,” “IV,” “V,” “VI,” and “VII” on the verso.

The crown was acquired by the collections of Palazzo Venezia as a companion piece to the Acuto Madonna (inv. 6964).

Hermanin Federico, Sculture medievali romane, in «Dedalo», 1, 1920-1921, pp. 217-223;
Hermanin Federico, L’arte in Roma dal sec. VIII al XIV, Bologna 1945;
Hermanin Federico, Il Palazzo di Venezia, Roma 1948, p. 339;
Ronald W. Lightbown, Mediaeval European Jewellery with a Catalogue of the Collection in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London 1992;
Cioni Elisabetta, Scultura e smalto nell’oreficeria senese dei secoli XIII e XIV, Firenze 1998;
Montevecchi Benedetta, Presenze e suggestioni veneziane dal XIII al XVI secolo, in Barucca Gabriele, Montevecchi Benedetta (a cura di), Beni Artistici. Oreficerie, Cinisello Balsamo 2006, pp. 38-54;
Torriti Pietro, in Torriti Pietro (a cura di), Sacra mirabilia: tesori da Castiglion Fiorentino, catalogo della mostra (Roma, Museo Nazionale di Castel Sant’Angelo, 18 febbraio-11 aprile 2010), Firenze 2010, pp. 25-31, n. 5;
Fachechi Grazia Maria, Museo Nazionale del Palazzo di Venezia. Sculture in legno, Roma 2011;
Jakšić Nikola, in Jakšić Nikola, Domijan Miljenko, Taburet-Delahaye Élisabeth, Huynh Michel (a cura di), «Et ils s’émerveillèrent». L’art médiéval en Croatie, catalogo della mostra (Parigi, Musée Nationale du Moyen Âge-Thermes de Cluny, 10 ottobre 2012-7 gennaio 2013), Paris 2012, p. 88, n. 39; 
Tomasi Michele, Il busto di sant’Agata a Catania e i reliquiari a busto medievali, in Sant’Agata. Il reliquiario a busto. Nuovi contributi interdisciplinari, a cura dell’Ufficio per i Beni Culturali dell’Arcidiocesi di Catania, Milano 2014, pp. 22-41;
Montevecchi Benedetta, Oreficeria sacra a Roma al tempo del Grande Scisma, in Angelelli Walter, Romano Serena (a cura di), La linea d’ombra: Roma 1378-1420, Roma 2019, pp. 357-374;
Lorenzo Riccardi, Per una storia della tutela della scultura lignea medievale nel frusinate, in Angelelli Walter, Pomarici Francesca (a cura di), Tra chiesa e regno. Nuove ricerche sull’arte del Basso Medioevo nel Frusinate, II, Roma 2021, pp. 409-454.