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A number of narrative scenes from Sinai tradition adorn the back-side of this cover. On the left, Moses stands in awe before the “bush that burned but was not consumed” (the Mother of God), and subsequently he removes his sandal. On the right, he is depicted receiving the tablets of the law. Further down, angels deposit the holy body of Saint Catherine in a reliquary on Mount Sinai, after they were translated there from Alexandria, the place of her martyrdom. The dedicatory inscription lists and donors, and associates them with the Holy Land. This cover stylistically belongs to a group of works produced in the second half of the sixteenth century in the multi-ethnic metalwork center of Čiprovci in the Balkans, or in Wallachian workshops.


Embossed, chased, engraved silver gilt
Height 35 cm

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