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Updated: May 21, 2025
The arches of the canopied arcade are filled with figures in relief in couples and enamels in basse-taille, red and blue alternately. The nielli have had a ground of blue enamel.
There are eight chalices, all of the fourteenth or fifteenth century, damaged by an inexpert goldsmith who had them to repair, with nielli or enamel grounds to the medallions, and good foliage in relief; two arms of S. Doimus, richly set with gems and precious stones among filigree; a good late fourteenth-century head of S. Giovanni Elemosinario; a morse of the same period, with gems and nielli; a fifteenth-century pax of gilded brass; and several interesting and very early crosses, probably of the eighth or ninth century, some even earlier.
The brass and nickel signs with black letters, which we find at the doors of business houses, are modern forms of nielli. While making a niello, the artist naturally wished to see how the work was progressing and if any alterations were required. It was not desirable to put the enamel in the design because it was difficult to remove.
The treasury contains a good many rather uninteresting objects, such as arm and leg reliquaries of the fourteenth century, or later rather, decorated with nielli and bosses in relief, and a few others shaped like vases borne on stems; on some of them the date 1483 can be traced.
Yet there stood the Santo gesticulating, and there were the fishes in rows the little fishes first, and then the middle-sized, and last of all the great big fishes almost out at sea, with their heads above the water and their mouths wide open, just as the Fioretti di San Francesco describes them. After this came some original drawings of doubtful interest, and then a case of fifty-two nielli.
A hand of S. Blaise is contained in a beautiful filigree reliquary, and is kept under glass. A head reliquary has a fine pierced pattern and a punched border of early Renaissance character, with niello medallions of the Evangelists' symbols. Another, not quite so good, is dated 1349, and has similar nielli, with interlacings of oak-sprigs.
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