Nduchi), Florence. Photo by the author. Pitti (Tesoro dei 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 components, relating to the past in type, style, and language, and thematizing the temporal passage involving venerable and modern day in a way that reanimated the grandeur from the Sarmatian past and Jagiellonczyk’s Litalinian origins in honor of each dynasties implicated in the relic exchange. Their shared magnificence and munificence had been 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 in the Pacowie Gozdawa (lily) and Florentine 4′-Methoxychalcone manufacturer giglio (iris) (Czyz 2020). They had been equally symbolic on the saint’s particular 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 also 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 from the centuries-old Vytis emblem from 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 Dicycloverine (hydrochloride) web because the Kazimierz reliquary’s premier material was constant with period diplomatic gift-giving to promulgate the uncommon and storied substance because the patrimony of your Baltic elite (Netzer 1993; King 2014). The Medici’s affinity for the prized substance manifested not just in collecting and displaying amber, engaging with it in religious practice, and incorporating it in medicines (Buchanan 2018), but also 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 household 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 among the list of mythological seats of the Pacowie as well as the Medici alike points to amber’s distinct agentive properties as a heterotemporal and heterotopic material, imbued using the potential to retroactively reaffirm prevalent dynastic origins and the transhistorical unity of the cult of saints. Amber’s generative materiality evoked notions of deep time along with the present, foreign, and nearby, hence translating the meaning in the Jagiellonian relic involving respective contexts (Grusiecki 2017). Its material hermeneutics, inherited from the Middle Ages, produced 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 on 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 for the incorrupt bodies of saints, plus the widespread expression of holy persons like Kazimierz who died “in odor of sanctity” (King 2013b; Bouley 2017). The latter topos.