Reliquary Tabernacles in Fourteenth-Century Italy: Image, Relic and Material Culture.: By beth williamson. Woodbridge, The Boydell Press, 2020. 264 pp., 12. col. illus. + 64 b/w illus. isbn 9781783274765. £75 (hb).

In this context, the author considers the visual interconnections between reliquary tabernacles and architectural façades, their relationship with larger-scale panel paintings, and the ways in which reliquary tabernacles artfully imitated sculpture and metalwork. The Sienese reliquary tabernacles under discussion incorporated several diminutive relics, which were orderly placed inside circular niches carved in the wood of the frame (or within the margins of the painted panels). This study provides a focused examination of a group of reliquary tabernacles - painted panels of relatively small dimensions, with relics embedded in their surface - produced by Sienese artists between the second quarter of the 14th century and the middle of the 15th century. [Extracted from the article]