POST MEDIEVAL MOUNT

1500

A book mount or casket mount of gilt copper alloy sheet, now slightly distorted, in outline a quatrefoil with the edge of each foil ogival and four lobes, one in the centre of each side, pierced for attachment (those at the top and base incomplete). With fine engraved ornament within a foliar frame depicting the Virgin and Child above a single-storied building held by a pair of angels high above the sea, which is depicted by wavy lines. The gilding is restricted almost entirely to the front face where abrasion has removed a transverse band just above the centre.The Holy House of Loreto, said to be the home of the Virgin in Nazareth, was miraculously transported from the Holy Land to Dalmatia (Croatia) in 1291, and three years later it was taken by angels across the Adriatic to the Marche region in Italy. After two further moves it arrived at Loreto. The cult of the Translation of the Holy House is first mentioned in 1472. The stone and mortar building is extant. The Holy House of Walsingham, a timber structure, was also believed to have been moved by angels, although only over a distance of only 200 feet and during the course of being built in the 11th century as a replica of the house in Nazareth. The earliest reference to this dates to c.1465 (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13454b.htm).On pilgrim badges representations of the Walsingham Holy House are consistently of a two-storied structure (Spencer 1980, 11-2; Spencer 1990, 30-2; Spencer 1998, 137-9). The water shown in this piece might possibly be interpreted as the spring or well that lay near the Shrine at Walsingham, but the Adriatic seems more likely. There is some similarity to a painting dating to c.1510 of the Loreto translation, by Saturnino Gatti in the Metropolitan Museum, New York. On the other hand the presence of the object in Norfolk might well be associated with the Walsingham cult. It is reasonable to assume that the object was lost or discarded before the accession of Elizabeth I in 1558.43.5mm x 36.5mm. Thickness 0.7mm. First half 16th century.