L'autel portatif de la comtesse Gertrude de Brunswick (vers 1040). Tradition royale de Bourgogne et conscience aristocratique dans l'Empire des Saliens

Abstract

The portable altar of the Countess Gertrude of Brunswick, conserved in the Museum of Cleveland amongst a number of other treasures of the Welf family, has never been closely studied from a historical point of view in spite of its artistic quality and remarkable iconography. It was commissioned by Gertrude Ist (f 1077), wife of count Liudolf of Brunswick (f 1038), an important member of a family related to the Ottonians, for the collegiate church of Saint-Blaise at Brunswick which she had founded. One aspect of its iconography is particularly original. On one of its side faces, four monarchs, Sigismund, Constantine, Helen and Adelaide, are grouped around the Cross. If the central theme, which underlines the growing importance of the cult of the Holy Cross for the imperial family during the XIth century, reveals Byzantine influence, the choice of the Burgundian monarchs Sigismund and Adelaide duely reflects the historical importance of the fusion of the Kingdom of Burgundy with the Empire in 1032. The Brunswick family, through the mariage of Liudolf's father, Bruno, with Giselle of Swabia, was descended from the Welf kings of Burgundy, just like the Salian dynasty through Giselle's third mariage with the emperor Conrad II (1024-1039). The portable altar, which probably dates from about 1040, highlights the political ambitions of a powerful family which had not given up its royal pretensions.