Manufatti architettonici e scultorei per l’ostensione delle reliquie in Europa tra XII e XVI secolo: pulpiti, cibori, tribune.

This research work focuses on the history and development of architectural and sculptural structures built specifically for the display of relics (tabernacles, ciboria, tribunes, external pulpits) in Europe, and more specifically in Italy, between the 12th and 16th centuries. The first chapter of the thesis analyses, through written sources from late antiquity to the early modern age, the use of liturgical structures designed for other purposes (in particular the altar and the pulpit) as a place to perform the ceremony of ostension. These functions, performed by the altar and pulpit, would from the 12th century onwards be performed by special structures designed and built for the exhibition of relics. The second chapter therefore analyses in detail the origin, evolution and spread of what can be considered the first european structures built to allow the display of relics, namely the so-called "cibori-tabernacoli", according to the definition given by critics to these artefacts. These structures, born and widespread especially in Rome’s churches, and today almost completely disappeared, consisted of a tabernacle, within which the relics were kept, raised by columns, and often equipped with an external gallery to allow the performance of the ritual of ostension. The chapter, to be read as a summary, follows the origin of the typology, starting from the first ephemeral apparatuses and the lost tabernacle linked to the cult of the Veil of Veronica in the Vatican basilica to the Renaissance examples of the 15th and 16th centuries, with specific attention to some case studies, like the one concerning the Tabernacle in Lateran Basilica made to contain the relics of Saints Peter and Paul heads. Some hints will also be focused on the European diffusion of the ciborio-tabernacolo model outside Rome, with specific attention to the exportation and remodelling of the typology in Tuscany and France. The third and final section takes an in-depth look at another type of structure explicitly intended for the display of relics, namely the external masonry pulpit, from its origins in the 13th century to its diffusion in various parts of Italy and Europe between the Middle Ages and the early modern age. Here too, part of the paper is devoted to the analysis of exemplary case studies (including the external pulpit of Prato cathedral and the one formerly in the collegiate church of Montevarchi), but always read in the light of a European devotional and art-historical context.