Medieval Art in Motion by Mariah Proctor-Tiffany;

Author:Mariah Proctor-Tiffany;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pennsylvania State University Press
Published: 2019-03-10T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

GIFTS TO INDIVIDUALS, NEAR AND FAR

In addition to the objects that Clémence de Hongrie offered in a ritual context, evidence survives for many other gifts that she gave to people in Paris and around Europe. She set her possessions in motion, and the trajectories, as well as the objects themselves, reveal the meaning of these gifts. Arjun Appadurai has written, in his pioneering volume on material culture, that “from a theoretical point of view human actors encode things with significance, from a methodological point of view it is the things-in-motion that illuminate their human and social context.”1 The trajectories of Clémence’s objects suggest some of the ways she formed her reginal identity through gift giving and connected with loved ones around Europe. By cross-referencing the queen’s inventory and testament, one can trace some of her objects from a former owner to Clémence and then from the queen to a subsequent owner. Thus the social lives of her objects have left documented trails that reveal the queen’s own local and international social networks, including her connections to people in England, Avignon, Buda, Naples, and elsewhere (map 5).

The courses taken by Clémence’s gifts are the subject of this chapter. Objects from her and perhaps her husband were documented in the treasury of Bari. The Peterborough Psalter, which was created in England, traveled to the pope in Avignon and then to Paris. Clémence’s grandmother bequeathed a large cup and a ruby ring to her in 1323. Clémence also received a shrine of the Virgin from Naples, which, upon her death, she left to her sister in Vienne. She also left a sculpture of Saint John the Baptist to a kinswoman in Arlay. Finally, the famed reliquary shrine of Elizabeth of Hungary, which is now at the Cloisters, probably came to Buda from Paris as a gift from Clémence to her sister-in-law Elizabeth. The dotted line of this path on the map suggests the probability, but not certainty, of this transfer.

The international paths of several works that were described in the treasury of the basilica of Saint Nicolas of Bari, in Apulia, demonstrate that objects could symbolize their donors and that Clémence acted as an intermediary between her natal and marital families. The basilica of Saint Nicolas was a major Angevin shrine largely endowed by Clémence’s grandfather Charles II d’Anjou. The 1362 inventory of the treasury there lists a silver sculpture that had come from Clémence, as well as a chalice and paten decorated with the arms of Louis that could have originated with either Clémence or her husband.2 Louis may have offered the chalice and paten to the church before he married Clémence, or they may have sent it together, or Clémence may have sent it to Bari during her widowhood. The queen’s inventory indicates that she owned a similar set at the time of her death (105).

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