Vatican Museums

This extraordinary collection of reliquaries, of various shapes and from different periods, was commissioned by Paolo Camillo Sfondrati (1561-1618), titular Cardinal of the Roman Basilica of St. Cecilia in Trastevere, when the relics that the Cardinal had started to collect in the final years of the papacy of Clement VIII (1592-1605) were united with those discovered under the altar of the church, to be stored in luxurious containers and destined for public veneration in a small chapel dedicated to the purpose (1599) before being transferred to the Vatican Library in 1935. The collection, subsequently transferred to the Vatican Museums, is now composed of 46 pieces, stylistically heterogeneous, the work of masters of German (23 pieces), Flemish (2), French (10) and Italian (11) origin. Despite the inscription that identifies them, dictated in Latin by the Maltese architect Antonio Bosi (1575-1629), the majority of the items would appear initially to have been intended for a purely secular use.