Brescia Casket

The Brescia Casket or Lipsanotheca (in Italian Lipsanoteca) is an ivory box, perhaps a reliquary, from the late 4th century, which is now in the Museo di Santa Giulia at San Salvatore in Brescia, Italy. It is a virtually unique survival of a complete Early Christian ivory box in generally good condition. The 36 subjects depicted on the box represent a wide range of the images found in the evolving Christian art of the period, and their identification has generated a great deal of art-historical discussion, though the high quality of the carving has never been in question. According to one scholar: "despite an abundance of resourceful and often astute exegesis, its date, use, provenance, and meaning remain among the most formidable and enduring enigmas in the study of early Christian art".

The complex iconography of the five faces is illustrated and identified below.

The box was made by a northern Italian workshop, probably in Milan, where Saint Ambrose was bishop, and engaged in a struggle with the Arian heresy. Milan has long been considered the most likely place of origin, which has been further strengthened after the insignia on the shields of the soldiers were identified as those of a unit of the Palatine Guards stationed in Milan in the late 4th century, when Milan was the usual residence of the Imperial court. The Notitia Dignitatum in the Bodleian Library in Oxford records these designs. One theory, discussed below, identifies the date very precisely to soon after 386, when Ambrose successfully led the Orthodox population in a confrontation with the Arian-leaning Imperial court. It has also been suggested that it was used for the relics of Gervasius and Protasius, two Milanese Roman martyr saints whose remains were translated (dug up and moved) in Ambrose's time, as recorded in a letter of his; this was one of the earliest translations recorded. The silver lock plate is later, probably from the 8th century, and later metal hinges were removed in 1928.

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