A New Years Gift from 1405

620 years ago King Charles VI of France received a New Year Gift from his Queen, Isabeau of Bavaria. The devotional image wrought in gold and enamel ornamented with precious stones and pears shows the King, in armour, together with his squire holding the royal helmet kneeling in prayer before the Virgin and Child who are accompanied by St John the Baptist and St John the Evangelist, shown as children playing with their attributes of tha Lamb and a chalice, and with St Catherine of Alexandria. On a level beneath the King his groom is tending to the King’s horse.

The whole ensemble, known today as the Göldene Rössl is illustrated and described in a 2020 article from the Index of Medieval Art at The Index | » New Year’s Gifts, then and now

Such lavish devotional objects were very much the fashion at the French court in these years. The British Museum has a similar piece from the 1390s in the Reliquary of the Holy Thorn, described by Wikipedia at Holy Thorn Reliquary

The Louvre has another example of similar date from the later treasury of the Order of the Saint Ésprit.

Such gifts are perhaps to be seen as an antecedent of the Russian bejewelled Easter Eggs made by Fabergé.

Given their precious constituent materials it is hardly surprising that so few examples are still extant today. Indeed this 1405 gift survives because a few months later King Charles, short of cash, passed it on to his brother-in-law in Bavaria as part payment of his pension, and as a result the piece ended up at the great Bavarian Marian and Wittelsbach shrine at Altötting.

The delicacy of the workmanship is wonderful in its intricacacy and charming to the eye. As the photographs show the often rather tragic and forlorn King Charles, assailed by mental heath problems and ruling over a faction ridden realm, appears calm, if pale and slightly drawn, and suggests a vulnerability that was only too real in his own life. Even if he felt obliged to give his gift way one can hope it gave him some pleasure in January 1405.