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Altar cross
Unknown - Enlarge image
Altar cross
- Place of origin:
England, Great Britain (made)
- Date:
ca. 1530 (made)
- Artist/Maker:
Unknown (production)
- Materials and Techniques:
Copper gilt, cast and gilded bronze, latten (sheet brass)
- Museum number:
2093-1855
- Gallery location:
British Galleries, room 58b, case 1
Object Type
This altar cross is of a type that was in common use in England in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. Such crosses were made in a way that allowed them to be used on the altar and as well as in processions, carried on a long staff. Another cross of this type is in the Museum collections (museum no. M.39-1920) and shown nearby in gallery 58a.
Materials & Making
The altar cross is made of copper gilt, cast and gilt bronze and a brass alloy.The object comprises separate elements that have come to the Museum from different collections. The cross itself came from the Bernal Collection (named for Ralph Bernal, a celebrated English collector who sold a number of works to the Museum in the 1850s). The figures of the Virgin and St John flanking the cross are from a private collection.
Historical Associations
Comparatively few altar crosses have survived in England. The majority were destroyed or melted down at the Dissolution of the Monasteries, ordered by Henry VIII in the later 1530s, and during the English Civil War (1642-1646).
