UNKNOWN GOLDSMITH, German
(active 1170s in Saxony)

Reliquary of St Oswald

1170s
Gold, precious stones
Cathedral Treasury, Hildesheim

St Oswald was a 7th-century king of Northumbria. He was revered in Germany, where his reliquary was commissioned probably by Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony, who had married an English princess, Matilda. The head and crown of the reliquary was added after 1185.