Medieval treasures in New York City.(exhibition)(Brief Article)

The long, rich history of Basel, Switzerland, began about 1200 B.C. The city flourished in the Middle Ages, and by the fifteenth century it was a center for the printing industry, the arts, and scholarship--particularly after the founding of the University of Easel in 1460. Situated on the Rhine River, the city was also an important and prosperous mercantile center, where guilds had been established since the thirteenth century.

Drawing on the two inventories, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and the Historisches Museum in Easel have organized an exhibition entitled The Treasury of Basel Cathedral, which is on view in New York City until May 27 and in Basel from July 13 to October 21. It comprises more than seventy-five splendid Romanesque and Gothic objects, dating from the early eleventh century through the early sixteenth, and includes silver and gold liturgical vessels, silk textiles, bronzes, and carvings in wood and rock crystal. These works were initially commissioned by members of the church, noblemen, and wealthy burghers.

The church was the leading patron of the arts, and the works artists and craftsmen created for Basel Cathedral are among the most sumptuous of any produced during the Middle Ages in western Europe. Inventories of the cathedral's holdings were prepared in 1477 and again in the sixteenth century, and it was not until the nineteenth century that its artistic treasures were dispersed, having survived an earthquake, wars, ...