A free-standing, gold, enameled, rectangular box has a triangular top like the roof of a house, and the box rests on a short, square foot in each corner. In this photograph, we look onto one long side and the short side to our right is angled toward us, so we see the panel there, too. Along the long side, five people are shown from the waist up in the upper, roof-like panel and six more line up on the panel below. The skin of every person is gold, and all wear robes and garments in lapis or sky blue, spring green, yellow, and white. The area around the people is also gold, and each panel is encased by a royal-blue band dotted with stylized stars at regular intervals. Each panel is then lined with small, button-like rounded bosses around its edges. In the upper panel, all of the men except the second from the right have beards, and all have halos with wavy bands of blue, green, yellow, and white. The man to our left holds a book and his neighbor a skeleton key the length of his arm. The man at the center holds up a book with his left hand, on our right, and raises the index and middle fingers of his other hand, held up at shoulder height. The two men to our right also hold books. In the panel below, three horses’ heads peek in from the left edge, creating a vertical band, and three crowned men line up, holding gold vessels and looking toward a woman seated in a throne with a child on her lap. The woman has a halo made with a wavy pattern of blue, yellow, green, black, and white. Her throne is flanked by columns, and the area around it is edged with bands of white, light, and dark blue. The baby wears gold, has a halo, holds a book in his lap with his left hand, and raises the first two fingers of his other hand toward the three men. The final person in this panel wears a hat, holds a scepter topped with a fleur-de-lis, and gestures at the woman and baby. The head and shoulders of a haloed person is visible along the short side of the box, which is angled sharply away from us. The gold between all the people and bordering each panel is intricately carved with tiny flowing organic lines and swirls.
French 12th Century, Reliquary Châsse, c. 1175/1180, champlevé enamel on gilded copper with oak core, Widener Collection, 1942.9.278

Curatorial Department: Decorative Arts

About the department

Renowned for its masterpieces of painting and sculpture, the National Gallery of Art also possesses exceptional examples of decorative art. The most important objects came as gifts from the Widener family of Philadelphia. Peter Widener, who worked as his brother’s apprentice butcher, dramatically expanded his business with a contract to supply mutton to the Union army in the Civil War. From this profitable enterprise, he built an extraordinary conglomerate that included streetcars and public utilities. After his older son perished in the sinking of the Titanic, Peter’s younger son, Joseph, rose to prominence in the family’s affairs. His impeccable taste assured that one of the great American collections of art would continue to flourish.

Peter and Joseph Widener had long contemplated establishing a national art museum in Washington, DC, and as the concept for the National Gallery of Art crystallized, Joseph concluded in 1938 that his family’s collection belonged in the nation’s capital. Among his paintings were masterpieces by El Greco, Vermeer, Manet, Constable, Degas, Murillo, Castagno, and Van Dyck. He insisted, however, that the entire collection come as a totality. The key to the gift was a spectacular group of Chinese porcelains, mostly from the Kangxi reign, that he and his father had amassed together over a period of 50 years. (Joseph had bought 54 porcelains from the collection of J. P. Morgan in one block for a million dollars around 1915.) He required that the porcelains be installed in rooms at the National Gallery designed to reflect the way they had been displayed in the Widener mansion outside Philadelphia. On that condition, the Widener paintings and sculptures would also be given to the Gallery. The number of Asian porcelains was augmented in the 1970s by Grace Steele’s donation of the Harry G. Steele Collection.

With Widener’s porcelains came the renowned sardonyx chalice of Suger, Abbot of Saint-Denis, just north of Paris, where the tombs of the kings of France were housed. Thanks to Joseph Widener, the Gallery displays a small treasury of medieval ecclesiastical objects, sumptuous tapestries, some grand 16th-century painted enamels from Limoges, Italian maiolica, and other Renaissance ceramics. One of only 70 known examples of Medici porcelain, as well as three examples of the intricately inlaid French Renaissance ware known as Saint-Porchaire ceramics, can be found here as well. French 18th-century furniture and other decorative arts came not only from Joseph Widener but also from the heirs of Joseph’s widowed sister-in-law, Mrs. George Dunton Widener. The renowned names of Leleu, Oeben, Riesener, Carlin, and Cressent among others thus also came to be represented in the Gallery’s collection. An important panel from the gigantic secrétaire made for Louis XVI by David Roentgen, which was dismembered during the French Revolution, was included (it had been incorporated as the top of another table).

Following the example of the Widener family, George M. and Linda H. Kaufman dramatically expanded the Gallery’s purview with their gift of approximately 100 examples of major American furniture. It includes works of art by several major figures in American decorative arts: Goddard, Townsend, Seymour, Amelung, Bonnin and Morris, and Duncan Phyfe.

Curatorial records

The Department of Curatorial Records maintains the curatorial files for paintings, sculptures, and decorative arts in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Art.

Curatorial records staff respond to research inquiries specific to the collections of the National Gallery of Art and provide additional information about documents in the curatorial files. Questions about collection information or requests for searches more complicated than those possible through the web site may also be directed to this office.

  • Hours

    By appointment only

  • Contact information

    Email: [email protected]

    Phone: (202) 842-6732

  • Location

    National Gallery of Art East Building
    Fourth St and Constitution Ave NW
    Washington, DC 20565

  • Mailing address

    Curatorial Records
    National Gallery of Art
    2000 South Club Dr
    Landover, MD 20785

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