Head Reliquary of St Christopher on the Island of Rab

Stylistic Bilingualism and Reaching a Consensus on the Patron Saint of Rab

Abstract

The head reliquary of St Christopher is the earliest preserved example of illustrating a saint’s legend in Dalmatian medieval art before the 14th century. The reliquary is usually dated to the 12th century and to the Latin-Byzantine or even Greek-Byzantine cultural circle. This paper proposes Zadar as its place of production and the Venetian cultural circle as the source of Byzantinizing or bilingual stylistic and iconographic elements found on this reliquary. Arguments are made for a later dating of the work, in the last decades of the 13th or the very beginning of the 14th century, which opens up the possibility that the reliquary was made under Bishop Hermolais of Rab, author of the text Miracula sancti Christofori from 1308. The pronounced classicism of the figures of Roman soldiers in the martyrdom scenes is explained by the use of Byzantine templates for warrior saints; however, the artist’s complete disregard for the role and meaning of Byzantine warrior saints is further evidence of the Western environment in which the reliquary was made. The depictions of the Torture with Arrows (which does not appear in the Greek version of the legend) and the Beheading correspond to, visually accompany, and support the two local feast days of St Christopher.