Abstract
Viewers of a late medieval reliquary in Basel’s cathedral treasury were confronted with a seemingly irreconcilable contradiction: the reliquary is in the shape of the heroic King David , ancestor of Christ, but the face is a cameo of Medusa , the female monster who turned men to stone.
David Rex manu fortis aspectu desiderabilis ecce / stirps mea et sal(us) mu(n)di quam divinit(us) P(ro)ph(et)avi.
King David, strong of hand and desirable of look, behold / My offspring and the salvation of the world as was prophesied through God.
—Inscription on banner held in hands of figural reliquary in Basel Münsterschatz
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Fischer, B. (2017). Facing Medusa: A Thirteenth-Century Reliquary of King David. In: Bradbury, C., Moseley-Christian, M. (eds) Gender, Otherness, and Culture in Medieval and Early Modern Art. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65049-4_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65049-4_2
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