Nduchi), Florence. Photo by the author. Pitti (Tesoro dei Sodium citrate dihydrate Biological Activity Granduchi), Florence.
Nduchi), Florence. Photo by the author. Pitti (Tesoro dei Granduchi), Florence. Photo by the author. PalazzoReligions 2021, 12,17 ofThe Baltic casket’s mode of re-contextualizing fragmentary pseudo-originals inside a palimpsestic pastiche inflected medieval Byzantine and Western types in patently Baltic materials, relating for the previous in kind, style, and language, and thematizing the temporal passage involving venerable and modern day within a way that reanimated the grandeur from the Sarmatian previous and Jagiellonczyk’s Litalinian origins in honor of both dynasties implicated in the relic exchange. Their shared magnificence and munificence were punctuated by reliefs with the so-called palle, the Medici escutcheon comprised six balls. Four fleur-de-lis finials on the corners have been equally evocative of the Pacowie Gozdawa (lily) and Florentine Giglio (iris) (Czyz 2020). They were equally symbolic of your saint’s specific status as a white spiritual martyr, referred to as un bianco giglio (a white iris) in period hagiography (di S. Antonio 1629, p. 60). The reliquary’s antiquarianism also invested with an aura of venerability the links interconnecting these dynasties and the cult in the saint inside, created present by the sculpted equestrian figurine of Kazimierz. His sword and shield and stiff posture recollect medieval heraldry and are reminiscent of your centuries-old Vytis emblem on the Lithuanian Grand Duchy (Galkus 2009), adumbrating his sobriquet of “noble Knight” in hagiographic literature (di S. Antonio 1629, p. 83). That amber figured most prominently because the Kazimierz reliquary’s premier Sordarin Antibiotic material was constant with period diplomatic gift-giving to promulgate the uncommon and storied substance as the patrimony of the Baltic elite (Netzer 1993; King 2014). The Medici’s affinity for the prized substance manifested not simply in collecting and displaying amber, engaging with it in religious practice, and incorporating it in medicines (Buchanan 2018), but in addition in their discursive obfuscation of its Baltic provenance (King 2014; Grusiecki 2017). By the time Cosimo received the long-awaited relic in its amber container, his family had already for more than a century constructed a discursive “Italianisation” of amber, mythologizing its native peninsular origins inside the Po River valley of ancient Etruria over the actuality of amber deposits around the Prussian littoral (King 2013a). That Etruria likewise represented one of several mythological seats with the Pacowie along with the Medici alike points to amber’s particular agentive properties as a heterotemporal and heterotopic material, imbued using the possible to retroactively reaffirm prevalent dynastic origins plus the transhistorical unity with the cult of saints. Amber’s generative materiality evoked notions of deep time and also the present, foreign, and neighborhood, thus translating the meaning with the Jagiellonian relic amongst respective contexts (Grusiecki 2017). Its material hermeneutics, inherited from the Middle Ages, made it exegetically suited to reliquaries: when handled, it underwent an invisible but sensible physical transformation triggered by and evocative of human flesh, bodying forth the presence from the saints. Amber retained warmth, conserved a static charge (amber in Greek is electron, o), and released a fragrance redolent of Church incense, the sweet smell ascribed to the incorrupt bodies of saints, and also the widespread expression of holy persons like Kazimierz who died “in odor of sanctity” (King 2013b; Bouley 2017). The latter topos.