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English

St. James the Great, ca.1400 - 1500

Description

Maker

  • Unknown

Culture

English

Title

St. James the Great

Year

ca.1400 - 1500

Medium

Alabaster

Materials/Techniques

Materials

  • Alabaster

Dimensions

Height: 24.1 cm (9 1/2 inches)

Type

  • Sculpture

Credit

Museum Appropriation Fund

Object Number

25.144

About

According to legend, the bones of Christ’s apostle, Saint James (Santiago), were transported from Jerusalem and buried in the Spanish town of Compostela. By the 11th century the site of his relics had become an important pilgrimage destination for Christians seeking remission of punishment for sins. Saint James is depicted here in the costume of a pilgrim, wearing a wide-brimmed felt hat adorned with a seashell that symbolized the completion of the journey to Compostela. His finely carved and painted head is a fragment of a larger sculpture that may have been broken by iconoclasts, reformers who considered images of Christ and the saints to be forms of idol worship and banned them from churches

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Use

The images on this website can enable discovery and collaboration and support new scholarship, and we encourage their use. This object is in the public domain (CC0 1.0). This object is St. James the Great with the accession number of 25.144. To request high-resolution files or new photography, please send an email to imagerequest@risd.edu and include your name and the object's accession number.

Feedback

We view our online collection as a living documents, and our records are frequently revised and enhanced. If you have additional information or have spotted an error, please send feedback to curatorial@risd.edu.

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