Stavelot Triptych

The Stavelot Triptych is a medieval reliquary and portable altar in gold and enamel intended to protect, honor and display pieces of the True Cross. Created by Mosan artists—"Mosan" signifies the valley of the Meuse river—around 1156 at Stavelot Abbey in present-day Belgium. The work is a masterpiece of Romanesque goldsmith's work and is today in The Morgan Library & Museum in New York City.

The Stavelot Triptych is a three-part winged shrine; with the wings open its dimensions are 19 in (480 mm) in height by 26 in (660 mm) in width. In such a triptych, the outer wings protect (when swung shut) the middle section, which contains two smaller triptychs, each containing pieces of the True Cross. The black velvet background is modern, originally it was a golden field inlaid with semi-precious stones — see for example the Cross of Lothair. The two inner triptychs are cloisonné enamel, a technique typical of Byzantine work; the six larger medallions (three on each outer wing) are in the champlevé technique which had by then largely replaced cloisonné in the West, and in which "Mosan" metalworkers were the leading artists in Europe.

The outer triptych is of Mosan origin, built to house the two inner triptychs of Byzantine origin, which predate the outer one by some decades. The artists are unknown, although other works have been suggested as coming from the same workshop. We do not know with certainty who ordered it, or who paid for it. The Benedictine monastery of Stavelot ruled the Principality of Stavelot-Malmedy, a small statelet in the Holy Roman Empire, and in this period commissioned a number of magnificent pieces of religious metalwork, as well as apparently running a scriptorium which produced some significant illuminated manuscripts, most notably the Stavelot Bible of 1093–97. We know that Prince-Abbot Wibald (1098–1158), was sent on a diplomatic mission to Constantinople by the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa in 1154. It is theorized Wibald received the two smaller triptychs as diplomatic gifts from the Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Comnenus, and after his return commissioned Mosan artists to create the larger outer triptych. The Triptych was certainly in the Abbey when it was suppressed in 1792, after the French Revolution. The last prince-abbot, Célestin Thys, carried the triptych to Germany during the Napoleonic Wars, where it remained until 1910, when purchased by a London dealer who sold it to J. P. Morgan.

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