The ship in the shop: An art history of late medieval ship models

Model ships around shrines: Ex-votos

In pre-Reformation Europe the ship ex-voto was usually crafted from wax, wood or metal (like our carrack in the shop) and fashioned with different degrees of verisimilitude. Votive panel paintings depicting maritime (near-)disasters only appeared on the scene during the fifteenth century, most commonly in a Mediterranean context; ⁶ they are excluded here from discussion because as material artefacts they bear no relation to the model ship in our goldsmith’s shop. Like body part or anthropomorphic ex-votos, the medieval ship ex-voto had conceptual ancestors that went back several millennia. The Minoans and Mycenaeans produced miniaturized ships for a variety of cultic purposes, as did the Nuraghians of Sardinia, and later the Greeks and Romans. ⁷ Like the anthropomorphic ex-voto, the medieval votive ship was an often expensive thank-offering pledged to a shrine and entailing the fulfillment of a vow, with the invited reciprocal gift being a miracle. Ship ex-votos were most commonly promised in times of deep existential crisis, whilst facing imminent shipwreck or being threatened by pirates, or before or during a naval battle. Displayed over the tomb or altar of a thaumaturgic saint, ex-votos, both of the nautical and anthropomorphic kind, bore material testimony to the intercessory efficacy of the saint and confirmed the authenticity of his or her relics. They also pointed back to the supernatural event that the saint had brought about, and were understood as metonymic parts (and connections) between the votary’s old and new life; as such they were ‘physical presences’ that gave ‘something of the healed [or rescued] self back to God’. ⁸ Unlike body part ex-votos, around which a whole cottage industry of art historical scholarship has grown in recent years, ⁹ the model ship ex-voto has rarely been acknowledged by the denizens of my discipline. ¹⁰ Unjustly, as this section aims to demonstrate.

The earliest records of medieval ship ex-votos date to the 12th century; perhaps surprisingly, all come from landlocked places. In the Translatio Godehardi episcopi Hildesheimensis (c.1132) we thus learn that a group of sailors from Holland gifted a silver ship (navim argenteam) to the bishop’s shrine in Hildesheim Cathedral after the saint had miraculously calmed a storm that had imperiled their ship. ¹¹ A few decades later the collected miracles of St. Bernward, also of Hildesheim fame, mention a number of merchants from Bremen, who, after having been saved from shipwreck twice through Bernward’s intercession, made a pilgrimage to Hildesheim where they deposited a wax ship (navicula cerea) and a small silver anchor (argenteam anchoram) at the tomb of the saint. ¹² Towards the end of the century, the Black Madonna of Rocamadour, who had been venerated at her shrine in the Lot region of France since the tenth century, likewise became the recipient of numerous maritime offerings in the shape of wax and silver ships. ¹³ The latter included two silver vessels each weighing roughly one mark (about 250 grams) that were respectively gifted by a pilgrim rescued from shipwreck on his return from Jerusalem and sailors from Boulogne who had called on the Virgin Mary when their vessel was threatened by massive waves. ¹⁴

While miraculous deliverance from the dangers of the sea was to remain the most common motivation for the pledging of votive model ships (in fact, in the Catholic Mediterranean countries well into the early twentieth century ¹⁵ ), on a few occasions such ships were not gifted after liberation from the natural elements but following a decisive naval victory. The famous Battle of Lepanto (1571), which ended with the destruction of an enormous Ottoman armada by the fleet of the Catholic Holy League, brought about entire flotillas of ex-voto ships (as well as countless votive paintings); as early as 1359, Peter IV of Aragon (the Ceremonious), after defeating a much larger Castilian fleet at the Battle of Barcelona, personally deposited a silver model of a galley at the famous shrine of Our Lady of Montserrat in Catalonia (the Aragonese fleet included at least 10 galleys, though perhaps more crucially, a coca fitted with a massive bombard). ¹⁶ Judging by a mid-16th-century description of Monserrat written by the cartographer Pedro de Medina, Peter’s silver galley would have held pride of place amidst a fleet of other ships made from wood (‘muchas naos de madera’) vowed to Our Lady by grateful sailors who had been liberated ‘from the depths and gulfs of the sea and from. . . terrible storms. . . and suddenly placed in ports of salvation’. ¹⁷

In terms of their material value, silver ex-votos such as King Peter’s would have been hard to surpass, though there were also votive ships that impressed through the sheer quantity of wax used in their manufacture. Such was the case when in October 1376 three envoys of Pope Gregory IX placed a wax ship weighing one quintal (roughly 46 kilograms) before the tomb of Urban V at St. Victor at Marseille, fulfilling a vow to do so when their ship had come close to sinking in a storm. ¹⁸ A ship model such as this one would have been made by an accomplished wax-chandler, though, as is documented at Tréguier in Brittany in 1331, there were also entire workshops that specialized in the making of naviform wax ex-votos. ¹⁹ Goldsmiths or silversmiths meanwhile produced the more prestigious silver ships, and, at least in one case, a series of votive vessels crafted from gold. The latter were commissioned by Edward III after his late father, the saintly Edward II, had interceded during a near-death experience at sea. In total, Edward III commissioned five gold ships, each worth more than £50, which were subsequently presented to four of England’s major shrines, Walsingham Abbey, St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, Gloucester Abbey and Canterbury Cathedral, which received two ships, one for the tomb of Thomas Becket, the other for the Lady Chapel there. ²⁰

While the textual sources often record the value or weight of votive ships, they are generally silent about the appearance of these offerings, with some exceptions. The Miracles of Louis of Anjou (d. 1297) thus mention a mariner’s wife from Marseille who, upon the safe return of her spouse’s vessel, vowed to the saint a ship of wax containing as many sailors of wax as there had been crewmen in her husband’s ship. ²¹ An even greater concern with mimesis informed the design of the votive ship that Louis IX and his wife Margaret of Provence had made after having survived near-shipwreck off the coast of Cyprus when returning from the Sixth Crusade in 1254. At the height of the storm, the chronicler Joinville, who traveled in the king’s retinue, recommended to the frightened queen that ‘there is one thing you can do: you can promise that if God brings you back to France, you will offer a ship of silver, worth five marks [roughly 1.25 kilograms] for the king, yourself and your children’. And Joinville continues:

When the queen – may God show her mercy – had come back to France, she had a silver ship made for her in Paris. In it were figures of herself, the king, and their three children, all in silver. The same metal was used for the sailors, the mast, the rudder, the rigging of the ship, while all the sails were sewn with silver thread. The queen told me that it cost a hundred livres to make. When it was ready she sent the ship to me at Joinville, so that I might have it taken to the chapel of Saint Nicholas [St-Nicolas-de-Port in Lorraine]. ²²

At St-Nicolas, where the relic of a finger phalanx of the famous mariner’s saint had been venerated since 1090, the royal couple’s silver ship would have occupied a prominent position amidst a series of other naviform model ex-votos near the high altar or the shrine itself, just as Peter the Ceremonious’ silver galley would at Montserrat about a century later. Hannah Baader has justly drawn attention to the fact that the sheer seriality of maritime ex-votos greatly facilitated the creation of communities of believers and maritime travel across places and time. ²³

Such fleets of ex-voto vessels are documented as early as c.1132 for Hildesheim Cathedral; the author of the Translatio Godehardi specifies that several ships of wax (cereae naves) and one of silver (argenteam navim) hung in the church (‘in ecclesia nostra pendentes’), presumably above or around the tomb of St. Godehard. ²⁴ Several textual sources and a few visual representations suggest that more often than not ship ex-votos were displayed together with other votive offerings, candles and body parts of wax or silver in particular. We learn, for instance, from a mid-15th-century inventory that the popular shrine of Archbishop Richard le Scrope (d.1405) in York Cathedral was decorated with an armada of 65 silver ships (both large and small), miniature anchors and oars (some fashioned from silver) and a plethora of anthropomorphic images. One of the beams (virgae) around the tomb was thus decorated with ‘duae ymagines major mulieris, minor viri, dimidia ymago viri [all manikins representing the soul], tibia viri, duo corda et xii naves de argento’. On another beam were displayed a ‘mamilla mulieris cum xiiii navibus de argento’. Similar configurations are recorded for the remaining four beams. ²⁵ Even in smaller churches, the number of votive ships and other oblatory artefacts could be staggering. Witness, for example, the description of the pilgrimage chapel of St. Anne of Brislington in the antiquary and chronicler William Worcester’s 1480 account of his home town of Bristol and its environs. While the building itself was of modest proportions, its altar of St. Anne was garlanded with votive offerings that Worcester evidently thought worthy of recording for posterity. Among them were numerous candles that burned in front of the image of the saint, including a massive square one gifted by the local weaver’s craft guild that rose 80 feet into the air, to the height of the chapel vault, as well as 32 models of ships, boats, and carracks (‘32 naves & navicule ac de caracis’), five of them of silver and worth a total of 100 shillings. ²⁶ The remaining 27 ships would have been made from wax, wood or base metals. The singling out of a specific ship type – the carrack, the same type of vessel visible in our goldsmith’s shop – is remarkable, for it suggests that some of Brislington’s votive ships would have been more mimetic of their large-scale counterparts and therefore more recognizable than others. As one of the largest ports in western Europe, Bristol – some two miles west of Brislington – would have seen the comings and goings of carracks on a regular basis, some hailing from the French Atlantic ports of Bordeaux, La Rochelle and Bourgneuf, others from the Basque towns of Santander and Bilbao.

Late medieval art represents anthromorphic ex-votos with some regularity, ²⁷ though to my knowledge there only exist three images – all from the decades around 1500 – that depict votive ships. Though small, this corpus helps us flesh out the kinds of shrine environments just discussed, while also giving us a fairly good idea of the design, size and sophistication of at least some of the higher-end nautical ex-votos produced in pre-Reformation Europe.

We begin with a now fragmentary woodcut of c.1490–1500 that shows the shrine of Henry VI of England (reg. 1422–61; 1470–1) at St. George’s Chapel in Windsor; it is pasted into the rear flyleaf of an English Bible (see Figure 2). ²⁸ The composition is dominated by the supersized figure of the saintly King, who is flanked by two praying groups of votaries. Beneath a cusped arch and to the right of the King’s upper body are visible several votive offerings, including a chain with fetters, a shirt and a pair of crutches, which are all suspended from a rod, and a votive ship, which appears to be hanging from the chapel vault. Though lacking in greater detail, the ship appears to be a cog-carrack hybrid, with a rather diminutive foremast and a tall mainmast, crowned by a crow’s nest and supported by standing rigging. Several authors have argued that the votive offerings in the woodcut, including the ship, are representative of specific miracles wrought by Henry VI. In this scenario, the ex-voto vessel in the image would be identical with the wax effigy of a ship that William Sanderson, a captain and shipowner, vowed to the shrine at Windsor after his ship had been saved from imminent destruction off the coast of Norfolk through Henry’s intercession. ²⁹

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Figure 2.

English master, Shrine of Henry VI at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, woodcut, c.1490–1500.

Hanging votive offerings of various kinds – including body parts and a ship – are also depicted in our second image, a panel from the Catalan Granollers Retable (c.1495–1500), which shows Princess Eudoxia, daughter of Emperor Theodosius II, being exorcised before the tomb of St. Stephen Protomartyr in Rome (Figure 3). ³⁰ Amongst the eight ex-votos, which include two eyes, two heads and a leg, the ship stands out in particular. Clearly recognizable as a nau or carrack, the vessel is depicted in three-quarter view so that more of its construction details can be appreciated. The ship is carvel-built from wood, just like its large-scale counterparts, and sports a high forecastle and an aftercastle crowned by a poopdeck, standing and running rigging, and even furled sails on the yardarms of each of the three masts. The presence of this late-15th-century ship model in a scene from the 5th century is of course a deliberate anachronism, perhaps to remind viewers that the intercessory powers of the Protomartyr were not confined to a particular time or place, but could effect miracles both in early Christian Rome and contemporary Catalonia. Though landlocked, Granollers, with its parish church of Sant Esteve (for which the retable was commissioned), is located just 25 kilometers northeast of Barcelona, a bustling port city where just as in late 15th-century Bristol the mighty carrack would have been a familiar sight, and where votive ships of the kind depicted in the Granollers panel would have been legion in seafarers’ churches such as Santa Maria del Mar or Santa Maria del Pì. ³¹

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Figure 3.

Rafael Vergós and Pere Alemany(?), Granollers Retable, detail of ex-votos from the panel showing Princess Eudòxia before the tomb of St Stephen, c.1495–1500.

While the votive vessels in Barcelona’s churches have long gone, we can obtain an approximate idea of how the interiors of these and similar merchants’ and sailors’ churches might have looked like from a painting by Vittore Carpaccio (c.1465–1525/6), depicting the miraculous Apparition of the Ten Thousand Crucified Martyrs of Mount Ararat in the (now destroyed) Venetian church of Sant’Antonio di Castello (Figure 4). ³² Painted in about 1515, the canvas represents the church interior from the north, with a view of the nave and south aisle, where three altarpieces can be seen, one in the latest all’antica forms, two of Gothic facture. The space above the two older retables – perhaps miracle-working shrines of sorts – is festooned with dozens of ex-votos, most of them of body parts, though there are also long candles, and, very prominent among this oblatory assembly, three model vessels of considerable size and elaboration. Above a wooden tie-beam beneath the aisle arches sit a carrack or cocha and a galley, with a second (perhaps hanging) carrack being visible by the aisle window in the background. Like the Granollers nau, all three vessels are faithful wooden replicas of their large-scale cousins; they are, of course, also later ‘votive reiterations’ of the kinds of carracks and galleys that loom in the busy back- and middle-grounds of the Saint Ursula cycle, a group of eight canvases that Carpaccio had painted for Venice’s prestigious Scuola Sant’Orsola some two decades before (also Venice, Accademia). ³³

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Figure 4.

Vittore Carpaccio, Apparition of the Ten Thousand Crucified Martyrs of Mount Ararat in Sant’Antonio di Castello, c.1515.

The votive environments depicted in the Granollers retable and Carpaccio’s ‘Apparition’ suggest that, by the end of the Middle Ages, at least some ex-voto ships were fashioned with the highest degree of nautical naturalism in mind. Judging by Joinville’s account of the silver ship of Louis IX, mimetic qualities in votive vessels were already sought and appreciated in the 13th century. Having been crafted by a Parisian goldsmith from precious metal, the Capetian king’s precious ex-voto remained, of course, a materially super-elevated nautical fantasy, just like the table nefs in our next section.

There is fascinating circumstantial evidence that the kinds of ex-voto vessels represented by Carpaccio and his Catalan counterpart were at least in part created by the same shipwrights who also built the large-scale versions of these ships for the ever-expanding theatre of commerce and warfare. The evidence comes from two late-medieval votive ships that actually survive: the model of a cog in the collegiate church of Ebersdorf near Chemnitz in landlocked Saxony from the early 15th century (in situ), ³⁴ and the so-called Mataró Ship, now in the Maritiem Museum Prins Hendrik in Rotterdam, which, like the wax vessel gifted by the mariner’s wife from Marseille, was initially crewed by miniature sailors (Figure 5). ³⁵ Significantly, both the German and Catalan models are made from wood, ³⁶ and both are of considerable size, the Ebersdorf Cog measuring 115 x 51 cm, the ‘Mataró Ship’ 123 x 43 cm, dimensions that make both vessels slightly smaller than the ships depicted in Carpaccio’s ‘Apparition’, but rather larger than the votive ship in the Granollers Retable. Though fragmentary, since only the hull (minus the deck) is extant, the construction of the clinker-built Ebersdorf model so closely resembles that of the most substantially surviving ship from the late Middle Ages, the Bremen Cog of c.1380 (Bremerhaven, Deutsches Schifffahrtsmuseum), ³⁷ as to suggest that the maker of the model must have had an intimate knowledge of northern European shipbuilding techniques. ³⁸ The carvel-built so-called Mataró Ship, which can be dated dendrochronologically to the first half of the 15th century, was likewise constructed by an expert in contemporary nautical engineering, though, ever since its appearance on the art market in 1920, scholars have wondered what kind of ship type it actually represents. According to the latest research by Marcel Pujol i Hamelink, the ‘Mataró Ship’ was originally built as a one-masted coca, and then retrofitted in the second half of the 15th century to resemble the newer, three-masted nau or carrack, like that depicted on the Granollers Altarpiece; the current, single-masted appearance would then come close to representing the first state of the vessel. ³⁹ Hamelink also debunks the long-held belief that the model was initially made for a church in the small town of Mataró (about 32 kilometers northeast of Barcelona), convincingly suggesting instead that the size and sophistication of the vessel point to a more spacious and perhaps prestigious ex-voto setting, such as one of the numerous parish churches or convents in Barcelona, Tortosa or Palma de Mallorca. ⁴⁰ His proposition that the ‘Mataró Ship’ was also – or perhaps subsequent to its use as a votive offering – employed by Catalan painters as a model for their own representations of contemporary vessels (for instance in a hagiographical altarpiece scene) is less convincing, ⁴¹ though his observation that the model might have been able to float – suggesting a potential utility far beyond the ex-voto context – is indeed very intriguing. ⁴²

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Figure 5.

Catalan master, so-called Mataró Ship, c.1400–50.

Let us return to the model ship in our goldsmith’s shop. As we have seen, it represents a carrack, and, like the two reliquaries on the adjacent shelf space, it also seems to have been crafted from silver-gilt. In terms of its form and size it comes close to the wooden ex-voto nau in the Granollers Retable, whilst its materiality brings to mind the silver and gold ships gifted both by European royalty and other wealthy individuals digging deep into their pockets to fulfil their anxious vows at sea. As just discussed, some ex-voto ships were made on commission and to the precise specifications of their patrons, the silver vessel gifted by Louis IX and Queen Margaret of Provence to the shrine of St-Nicholas-du-Port being a chief case in point. Other, perhaps smaller and more generic-looking silver votive ships – possibly like many of those that hung around the tomb of Archbishop Richard Scrope at York Cathedral – might have been produced for the open ex-voto market and would have been available at shops catering to pilgrims and votaries, and located close to a specific shrine. It is certainly possible to imagine that, like the objects that surround it – the two reliquaries and an entire panoply of plates, goblets and ewers – the small carrack in our goldsmith’s shop is being sold ‘off the rack’. It is specific enough to resemble a particular ship type, but generic enough not to resemble any particular ship. Even if bought ‘as is’, it would certainly not look out of place in the kinds of votive environments investigated in this section. One can also imagine that patrons looking for more specificity could have had the vessel calibrated to their particular oblatory needs, for instance by asking the goldsmith to add or subtract certain details of the hull or rigging, or by having its tiny decks peopled with miniature versions of themselves and of the crew that eventually brought their ship home. Whether acquired in its current state or personalized, our silver carrack would have represented an impressive addition to any shrine, and both its form and materiality would have spoken eloquently about the maritime miracle bestowed on the donor of the vessel. However, it is my contention that the ship in the shop could have been put to other uses as well. In fact, as the following section will show, the vessel could have performed a function that was entirely different from that of the votive ships just examined. For this discussion we will need to leave the auratic ambience of the miracle-working shrine and imagine ourselves amongst the guests of an opulent late medieval banquet.

Model ships at the high table: nefs

With the exception of the two reliquaries, the objects on the shelves in our goldsmith’s shop, including the ship, would not have been out of place at the high table of a late medieval king, nobleman, bishop or wealthy burgher. In fact, we find all of them depicted in a French manuscript miniature of c.1470–80 illustrating Jehan de Wavrin’s Anciennes et nouvelles chroniques d’Angleterre and depicting the lavish banquet that Richard II of England (reg. 1377–99) threw for the Dukes of York, Gloucester and Ireland in the London residence of the Bishop of Durham in 1387 ( Figure 6 ). ⁴³ While beakers, ewers, cups and plates figure prominently on both the dining table and on a separate smaller display buffet, the ship – here of the one-masted variety, with a beak-like forecastle and a box-shaped poop – is being carried by a fashionably attired courtier to the waiting guests, perhaps to the sound of the fanfare given by two musicians posted on a gallery to the left. A closer look at the ship reveals that it is crewed by four tiny sailors – two are climbing up the shrouds, whilst another pair brandish bows or crossbows in the crow’s nest. Also known as nefs, such miniature vessels were essential props in the complex choreography of courtly ritual, etiquette and power. ⁴⁴ In contrast to ex-voto ships, which were gifted by men and women from all walks of life, nefs were entirely used by the uppermost echelons of society, and unlike their oblatory counterparts, they were almost exclusively fashioned from precious metals and other valuable and rare materials such as gemstones and nautilus shells. At a feast, they would mark the place of the lord at the high table, though they could also have had a more utilitarian purpose; depending on their size, they might likewise have held wine, precious culinary commodities such as salt, pepper and other spices, as well as plates, cutlery and other tableware. There is some evidence indicating that nefs could even contain so-called serpents’ tongues (possibly fossilized shark teeth) that were believed to be endowed with the power of detecting poison in food. ⁴⁵ Although it is not entirely clear why they assumed the shape of ships, nefs, especially when designed as more credible vessels, would certainly have alluded to the lord’s cosmopolitan network of contacts, his ‘global reach’, and – when used for the ostentatious display of very expensive spices – his sheer economic wherewithal. In addition, nefs, as costly, high-end objects themselves, were frequently exchanged and re-gifted to mark alliances and treaties or to signal fealty and vassalage, and they prominently featured in ceremonies of goodwill from cities to sovereigns. Charles V of France (reg. 1364–80) for instance received three nefs from Paris following his joyeuse entrée into the city after his coronation at Reims. ⁴⁶ Over time, late medieval sovereigns could accumulate entire fleets of nefs. The 1398 inventory of the royal treasure of Richard II of England lists no less than 18 of these model ships: five lesser ones connected with the king’s chapel, and 13 sumptuous ones used at Richard’s table. The latter comprised both smaller nefs holding salt and a series of enormous display vessels crafted from solid gold or silver, and encrusted with enamels and jewels. ⁴⁷ As far as their design as ships was concerned, some of Richard’s nefs might have resembled the banana-shaped table vessels depicted in a late fourteenth-century miniature of the Grandes chroniques de France (see below), though according to the inventory of the king’s treasure at least six of his gold ships were equipped with forecastles and aftercastles, sails, masts, sheets and royal banners. ⁴⁸ At first sight it seems feasible that the nef in the illumination with which we began this section belonged to this more mimetic group of the king’s table ships, especially since it appears to represent a one-masted cog, a type of ship still widely in use during the days of Richard II but very much outmoded by the time the miniature was executed. However, on closer inspection this scenario seems unlikely. The text that accompanies the image makes no mention of the particulars of Richard’s table ornaments, and it is doubtful that the late fifteenth-century French artist, when giving his visual rendition of the English king’s ‘feste en la cite de londres tres grande et tres grosse’ (f. 265r), had access to sources other than Jehan de Wavrin’s account. What both the inventory and the miniature nevertheless point to is the existence of a specific category of nef that replicated (at least some of) the features of actual ships, just like the model vessel in our goldsmith’s shop, or for that matter, like some of the ex-voto ships examined earlier. Before we can consider this category in more detail, we will briefly need to look at a type of medieval nef that was never intended to look like a large-scale ship and that remained at best a kind of naviform abstraction.

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Figure 6.

French miniaturist, Feast of Richard II, in a copy of Jehan de Wavrin, Anciennes et nouvelles chroniques d’Angleterre, c.1470–80.

The earliest references to nefs date to the first decades of the thirteenth century, ⁴⁹ though judging by the surviving documentary and visual evidence it appears that table ships only came into more common use in the century that followed, especially in the context of the rich ritual and material culture of the Plantagenet and Valois courts. It also emerges that right from the outset nefs, whose forms made only passing reference to actual ships, were produced alongside those that were modeled more closely on the kinds of vessels that actually plied the seas at the time. Similar observations can be made about the development of ex-voto ships in the 13th and 14th centuries.

The formally simplest nefs were boat-shaped basins with a lid in the ‘deck’ that bore no or little resemblance to contemporary ships. Nefs of this kind were devoid of masts or rigging, though some could be supported by elaborate, heraldically decorated bases, whilst others, like two respectively owned by Charles V of France and his brother Jean, the Duke of Berry, were mounted on wheels, ⁵⁰ perhaps to be ‘run down the dinner table and lower the tension at tedious banquets’, as Oman humorously suggests. ⁵¹ Contemporary illustrations indicate that this type of nef (minus the wheels) was similar in appearance to contemporary naviculae used during Mass, such as the Ramsey Incense Boat of c.1350 (London, Victoria and Albert Museum). ⁵² A well-known image that depicts such nefs is an illumination from the Grandes chroniques de France (c.1380) showing King Charles V of France, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV and his son King Wenceslas of Bohemia at a grand state banquet, which took place in 1378, and which featured, amongst other diverting entremets, a great floor-show re-enacting the taking of Jerusalem during the First Crusade (Figure 7). ⁵³ In the miniature, each of the three royal participants has his own nef set before him, with the largest being reserved for the ageing Charles IV (reg. 1355–78), who can be recognized by his Bügelkrone or Imperial Crown. The design of the three crescent- or banana-shaped vessels makes one concession to verisimilitude in that it incorporates crenellated forecastle and aftercastle that echo those of the wooden or canvas mock-up of a troop transport visible in the foreground of the image and here used as a prop in the dramatized Siege of Jerusalem.

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Figure 7.

French miniaturist, Feast of Charles V, in a copy of the Grandes chroniques de France, c.1380.

Visual representations such as the famous calendar miniature for the month of January in the Très Riches Heures of Jean, the Duke of Berry (reg. 1360–1416) testify to the popularity of such abstracted nefs at the royal, princely or ecclesiastical dinner table well into the 16th century (Chantilly, Musée Condé, MS 65, f. 1v; c. 1413–6). Paralleling this development was the rise of another type of table vessel, which replicated more closely the design of contemporary ships, sometimes though with the admixture of outright fantastical elements or a good deal of religious symbolism. As early as 1326–27, a miniature from the Secretis secretorum, a pseudo-Aristotelian treatise on statecraft, depicts a nef – here anachronistically set before King Alexander the Great – that comes complete with forecastle and aftercastle, stern rudder, cross-topped mast, square sail and standing rigging (Figure 8). ⁵⁴ The ship represented by the model is that of a one-masted cog, the workhorse of Baltic and North Sea trade that would continue to sail the northern oceans for another century or so. A similar such nef, a miniature coca from the last quarter of the 14th century, has survived in the treasury of Toledo Cathedral. Commissioned from a Seville workshop, the vessel was bequeathed to the cathedral by Archbishop Pedro Tenorio (reg. 1377–99) in hopes of having it converted into a reliquary, on which more below. ⁵⁵

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Figure 8.

English miniaturist, Feast of Alexander the Great, in a copy of the Secretis secretorum, 1326–7.

In the late 15th-century illumination of the feast of Richard II we have already encountered one mimetic nef that was literally animated by a miniaturized crew, just like some of the ex-voto ships in the previous section. In a votive ship, these Lilliputian figures functioned as pictorial deputies of sailors and passengers who had been saved by saintly intercession; on a contemporary nef, the tiny statuettes of sailors, soldiers and travellers augmented the wondrous spectacle of a miniature ship ‘arriving’ in a landlocked banqueting hall. Here is a small oceangoing vessel laden with salt and exotic spices, one or the other banquet guests might have marvelled, that has been safely steered by its busy little crew through storms and across shallows to the safe haven of my lord’s dinner table! As we will see below, such tiny travellers might also have encouraged attentive viewers to imagine themselves in their midst, and to embark with them on a voyage of fantasy.

We know of these miniature crews from late medieval visual representations, royal and princely accounts, and a number of nefs that have actually survived the ravages of time. One such nautical merveille is listed in a 1379–80 inventory of Louis I, Duke of Anjou (reg. 1360–84). ⁵⁶ The relevant passage describes a great, three-masted nef of silver at sea, staffed with at least 21 figures. On the aftercastle stood four trumpeters, a captain and his four servants; on the main deck four sailors were winding the ropes of the mainmast on pulleys, while five men were busy on the forecastle; two of them pulling the ropes of the mast there, another pair sitting at either end of the yard-arm and tying the rigging that came from the mainmast. Two further sailors were keeping a lookout in the crow’s nest of the mainmast. The naturalism of the ship was further enhanced by details such as a hatch on the main deck, rope ladders, a water-butt with a bucket, and even a hearth with a large boiler suspended above it and attended to by the ship’s cook.

Other table ships were populated by more ethereal crews. In 1395, for instance, Louis, the Duke of Orléans (reg. 1392–1407), ordered a silver-gilt nef from his goldsmith Aubertin that sported, on the forecastle and aftercastle respectively, the figures of the Virgin Mary and Gabriel enacting the Annunciation. On the deck between them were the Twelve Apostles, and on the poop the Four Evangelists. Particularly remarkable was the mast, which was fashioned as a crucifix surrounded by angels, and crowned by God the Father on the mast head. The foot supporting the ship was decorated with further saintly and biblical statuettes, including two of ‘Addam et de Eve esmaillez de blanc, comme nue’. ⁵⁷ The vessel represented by these travelers was of course an allegorical one, the Ship of the Church or navis ecclesiae, a nautical-soteriological trope that had been around since the times of the earliest Church Fathers, but that was gaining new momentum and currency in the century and a half before the Protestant Reformation, especially, as I have shown elsewhere, in the visual arts. ⁵⁸ It might strike us as odd today that Louis chose a religiously-themed vessel for his table, though in an age when sacred imagery and devotional practices pervaded virtually every aspect of life, the religious and the profane were never far apart; it is also conceivable that the salvatory overtones of this nef were complemented or ‘balanced out’ by the iconographies of other table ornaments, including perhaps additional nefs depicting scenes from courtly romance, as found, for example, on the Burghley Nef of c. 1527–28, a carrack with a nautilus-shell hull containing the figurines of Tristram and Iseult playing chess (London, Victoria and Albert Museum). ⁵⁹ We should also remember that many ocean-going vessels at the time sported pennants or sails that bore the protective images of saints, the Virgin Mary and the crucified Christ.

Precisely such guardian saints – here Catherine of Alexandria, George, Sebastian, and of course, Nicholas of Myra – adorn the flags that crown the masts of what is undoubtedly the most life-like of all medieval nefs, the so-called Schlüsselfelder Schiff of c.1503, now on display in Nuremberg’s Germanisches Nationalmuseum (Figure 9). ⁶⁰ Named after its first recorded owner, the Nuremberg patrician Wilhelm Schlüsselfelder (1483–1549), whose family arms also decorate the pennant of the foremast, the Schlüsselfelder Schiff is a faithful silver-gilt replica of a contemporary carrack, though whether it was based on the goldsmith’s observation of an actual ship remains doubtful, especially given the fact that Nuremberg is nowhere near the sea. Scholars generally concur that the design of the nef drew instead on visual representations of carracks, in particular an engraving of a three-masted ‘kraeck’ produced by the Netherlandish monogrammist WA (also referred to as the Master with the Key) sometime between 1475 and 1485 (Figure 10). ⁶¹ The Schlüsselfelder Schiff surprises its viewers through its superabundance of nautical detail, including the grappling anchor that hangs from the bowsprit, the maze of its rigging and pulleys, the tiny cannons and the stern rudder that actually turns. The 72 figures that populate every part of the ship reward further inspection. Sailors climb in the rope ladders of the main mast, raising and lowering ballast sacks, and soldiers with pikes and harquebuses man the crow’s nests, whilst others operate the cannons. Below the awning lattice surmounting the aftercastle a banquet is in full swing, accompanied by drummers and pipers. There are also two card players, two monks, a pair of embracing lovers, a washerwoman, bent over a tub, and even a sailor defecating over the ship’s railing. Like all mimetic nefs, the Schlüsselfelder Schiff was more than the model of a specific type of ship recruited into the service of banqueting ritual. It was a conversation piece, a labyrinth of the gaze. Like many medieval nefs, it also served a practical purpose, for its entire top part just above the waterline can be lifted and its hull filled with ‘zwo Maß getrancks’, or 2.33 liters of wine or other strong drink. Warming its users with its alcoholic contents, representing them as miniature diners on the poop deck, and challenging them to figure out the marvelous workings of the rudder and the rigging, the Schlüsselfelder Schiff took its audiences on a journey of the imagination, far beyond their Nuremberg host’s dinner table. The fact that only the sail on the foremast billows in the wind, whilst those on the main and mizzen masts remain furled, adds a certain ambiguity to this journey. Viewers may have wondered whether the ship before them, with its cargo of merry-making dinner guests, was just leaving port or whether indeed it was already back in home waters, having returned from a voyage replete with wondrous sightings (such as the double-tailed mermaid supporting the nef) and memorable adventures.

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Figure 9.

Nuremberg goldsmith, Schlüsselfelder Schiff, c.1503.

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Figure 10.

Monogrammist WA, carrack, engraving, c.1475–85.

If we were to view the Schlüsselfelder Schiff from a little distance, and if we were to subtract the mermaid foot and sail yards, it would quite resemble our ship in the goldsmith’s shop. The Schlüsselfelders, and the putative patron and first owner of the nef, Wilhelm Schlüsselfelder’s uncle Matthäus Landauer (1451–1515), ⁶² were wealthy, well-connected burgher merchants, who were part of Nuremberg’s ‘upper crust’, the Patriziat, which governed the Imperial Free City and generously sponsored its arts. One can imagine a Nuremberg goldsmith’s shop similar to that in our illumination receiving a visit from Landauer or a member of the Schlüsselfelder family, fashionably dressed like the customers in the miniature, and voicing their interest in acquiring a nef for their table. The Nuremberg goldsmith, who has so far not been identified, might have presented his esteemed patron with the same three options that a rich votary of a replica ship might have been given by a well-sorted devotional specialist or in goldsmith’s shop like ours:

Given the specificity of the design, technical details, and iconography of the Schlüsselfelder Schiff, it is likely that its patron rejected the first and second options (assuming such options would have been available in early 16th-century Nuremberg) and settled on the third.

So far, we have entertained the idea that the ship in our goldsmith’s shop was either made for the open market or as a display piece that could be sold on request. As the following section shows, we will need to consider a third possibility, namely, that the carrack in the shop, though prominently displayed, is not for sale at all and instead a customer’s property that awaits conversion into a new category of object. While, to my knowledge, ex-voto ships or miniature vessels containing relics were never turned into nefs, there is a substantial amount of evidence to suggest that after a long service life as table ornaments, nefs could be transformed, re-rigged and re-populated to become reliquaries and ex-voto ships gifted to court chapels, pilgrimage churches and cathedrals, sometimes long after their original owners had passed away. In this scenario, the ship in the shop could represent a nef that has outlived its purpose as a plaything at the dinner table, and that is now being fitted out to begin a new voyage as a religious object containing the relics of a favourite saint or fulfilling a vow made years ago during a terrible storm at sea. The two reliquaries on offer (or at least on display) certainly suggest that our goldsmith’s shop also catered to its customers’ devotional needs.

Model ships repurposed: nefs-as-reliquaries, nefs-as-ex-votos

The repurposing of often costly and exotic secular objects into stage props for the service of the Christian faith has a long history in medieval art. Rock crystal flacons produced in Fatimid Egypt were thus mounted into architectural reliquaries to become the new abode for a saint’s finger or thighbone, and luxury silks, brocades and carpets from Byzantium and the Orient were draped over and around altars where such reliquaries would be displayed. Particularly famous is the case of a Roman parade helmet that became the head of the reliquary of Sainte-Foy, first mentioned in c.1010, which housed the mortal remains of Sancta Fides, a Christian girl said to have been martyred in the late third century during the reign of Emperor Diocletian (Conques, Abbey Church Treasury). The nefs discussed in this section fall squarely into this tradition, even though the modifications made to transform them into vessels of devotion were sometimes quite minimal.

One example of such a limited overhaul is a reliquary-nef that is depicted together with two other such vessels in a richly illuminated guide (1526–27) to what was undoubtedly the largest collection of relics in pre-Reformation Europe, the so-called Hallesches Heiltum, which had been amassed by Cardinal Albrecht von Brandenburg for display in his Collegiate Church at Halle (Aschaffenburg, Hofbibliothek, MS 14). ⁶³ The nef in question, shown on f. 318r and rendered like the other reliquaries and vasa sacra in the guide in exquisite pen drawing, came from the Cathedral of Magdeburg, to which it had been presented by Archbishop Ernst in 1503. Judging by its entirely secular iconography, consisting of four Wild Men supporting the vessel, mythical beasts on the sides of the hull, and a crew of five, it would have graced a princely table shortly before that, possibly that of Ernst of Magdeburg himself. The ship represented – a kind of cog with a stern rudder – would have been deemed antiquated even by contemporary viewers, though it stands to reason that their attention was more captivated by the two bizarre corals that seemed to sprout from the forecastle and mast head. According to Philipp Maria Halm, who published a partial edition of the luxury guide in 1931, the nef had formerly been decorated with two poison-detecting serpents’ tongues (Otterzungen), which were removed before the ship was subsumed into Cardinal Albrecht’s vast collection; all it subsequently took to convert the vessel into a reliquary was to fill its hull with 48 different relic fragments (Partikel). ⁶⁴ More work might have been required on the other two nefs (f. 128r and 368r) before they were able to enter the cardinal’s treasury. ⁶⁵ The two ships are already illustrated, with brief descriptions, in the Hallesches Heiltumbuch, a printed guide to the collection that appeared in 1520, several years before the singular luxury volume. ⁶⁶ Both are devoid of rigging and only vaguely naviform, and stand in the tradition of the crescent-shaped table vessels briefly discussed in the previous section. As featured in the printed Heiltumbuch, the first nef held several Partikel associated with the Passion, among them lumps of earth drenched with the blood of Christ. ⁶⁷ It is conceivable that the angel playing a harp and positioned in the crenellated stern was added before the vessel took on its new role as a reliquary, although as we have seen, nefs populated by biblical or saintly figures were also employed at the courtly dinner table. The second vessel represents a more clear-cut case of a partial physical refit (Figure 11). ⁶⁸ According to the Heiltumsbuch, this ‘silver gilt ship with many cameos’ contained several relics of St. Ursula and her companions, including one of her finger bones and four ‘beautiful fragments of her arm’ (‘vier schoene partikel von yrem arme’), as well as two Partikel from the mast of her ship. ⁶⁹ The ‘silbern ubergult Schiff mit vil Gamahuen’ was an elaborate table ornament adorned with sea-creatures on the socle, mother-of-pearl half-figures along the sides of the hull, ⁷⁰ and, rising from the centre, a short, columnar mast without yard, sail or rigging. The conversion into a reliquary not only of St. Ursula and her fellow-martyrs but also of her ship entailed the making of a figurine of the saint (‘sant Vrsulen bild’) shown holding her tell-tale arrow and kneeling next to a tiny mast, which came complete with yard-arm, billowing sail and crow’s nest. As grafted onto the much broader mast stump below, the statuette of St. Ursula with her little square-rigged mast looks rather incongruous, in fact downright silly, but then transforming the nef into a more credible ship clearly was not the point of the conversion. In the 1510s, when this reliquary must have been created, the cult of St. Ursula was in full swing, with brotherhoods promoting her relics and imagery springing up throughout Mitteleuropa and beyond. ⁷¹ Central to St. Ursula’s iconography was the ship (or flotilla of ships) that had brought her and her 11,000 virginal companions from Rome to Cologne, where all of them were slaughtered by the Huns. During the 15th century the image of the Ursula-Schifflein or naviculae ursulanae containing the saint and her virgins emerged as the single most important motif in her pictorial narrative, so much so that it was often shown in a prominent position or even isolation, for instance in the centre of retables like the Nikolausaltar at Our Lady in Oberwesel (1506), or – re-rigged as the allegory of the Ship of the Church – in a number of single-leaf woodcuts. ⁷² Moreover, as we have seen with regard to her reliquary at Halle, with its two fragments ‘vom mastbaum yres schiffs’, St. Ursula’s ship became itself the focus of a relic cult. ⁷³ The enormous popularity of the navicula ursulana, both as a stand-alone iconography and as a material object imbued with potentially miraculous powers, occasioned the creation of at least one other reliquary-nef dedicated to the preservation of relics associated with the saint, a ‘petite navire d’or et d’argent [. . .] pour mectre les unze mil vierges’, which is now on display in the Palais du Tau in Reims, and on which more below.

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Figure 11.

Lucas Cranach the Elder et al., Reliquary Nef of St. Ursula, in the luxury guide to the Hallesches Heiltum, 1526–7.

A systematic trawl through the published inventories of Europe’s major late medieval church treasuries would probably find evidence of quite a few reliquary-nefs that have since perished in the vicissitudes at of time. As we have seen, Albrecht of Brandenburg’s Stiftskirche at Halle had three of them; around the same time, there were at least four in the city of Copenhagen, two in the Collegiate Church of St. Mary’s, another two in the Franciscan Friary Church. ⁷⁴ Three such nefs still survive in the treasury of Toledo Cathedral, the earliest being the already mentioned coca gifted by Archbishop Tenorio during the last quarter of the 14th century. ⁷⁵ The other two were likewise fashioned as single-masted cocas, perhaps by Venetian goldsmiths, though today they only survive in fragmentary or considerably altered form. The first may have been gift of Doña Mencia Enriquez de Toledo (d. 1479), second wife of Bertran de la Cueva, Duke of Albuquerque, while the second was bequeathed to the treasury by Queen Joanna of Castile and Aragon (reg. 1504/16–1555), better known today as Juana la Loca. Of the first nave relicario, only the hull, with its large crystal cabochon below the waterline and fine silver-gilt detailing above it, survives today. Queen Joanna’s ship, with its jutting forecastle and prominent awning lattices, is largely complete, though the current tubular mast was only added after it had been decided that it should contain some relics of St. Leocadia, an early Christian martyr whose remains were brought back to Toledo in April 1587, over three decades after Joanna’s death.

Of the reliquary nefs that are still extant today, that of St. Ursula in the Palais du Tau at Reims Cathedral is certainly the most celebrated, not only because it is well documented and exquisitely crafted, but also because of its extraordinary journey that saw it repurposed and refashioned several times, across four generations of French royal ownership (Figure 12). ⁷⁶ Featuring a hull of streaked red and white carnelian and a one-masted superstructure adorned with tracery configurations and miniature towers, this altogether fantastical nef was presented by the city of Tours to Anne, Duchess of Brittany (reg. 1498–1514) and then queen consort of Louis XII of France, upon her entry into the city in November 1500. This was the second nef that Anne received from the aldermen of Tours, the first having been given to her nine years before upon her joyeuse entrée into the city following her marriage to Charles VIII. Bearing the mark of an as yet not conclusively identified Tours goldsmith, ⁷⁷ Anne’s second nef might well have graced the royal dinner table (perhaps in tandem with the first one) for a number of years before it was refashioned into a reliquary of St. Ursula and her companions by the royal goldsmith Henry Duzen in 1505. The conversion from a ‘petite navire d’or et d’argent’ into a vessel ‘pour mectre les unze mil vierges’ is explicitly referred to in a receipt dated 3 June that year and drawn up at Blois by the royal painter and page Jean Perréal. ⁷⁸ Duzen’s refit primarily entailed exchanging most of the nef’s previous crew of sailors and soldiers for a group of gold and enamel figures depicting the ‘unze mil vierges’, of which six survive. The most conspicuous of these shows St. Ursula in the garments of a French queen and may well be a cryptoportrait of Anne of Brittany herself. ⁷⁹ Thus repurposed (and probably filled with choice relics of the 11,000 virginal companions), the nef continued to serve as a courtly devotional object for nearly seven decades; after some minor overhauls mainly involving the addition (and switching out) of coats-of-arms of subsequent royal owners, the vessel’s voyage finally ended in 1574, when it was given to Reims Cathedral by Henri III on the occasion of his consecration as King of France there in the same year. There’s no reason to doubt Henri’s piety, but this last transfer of ownership was primarily politically motivated, and had little to do with the reasons that would occasion the gifting of ex-voto ships in other churches at the time.

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Figure 12.

Various French goldsmiths, Reliquary Nef of St. Ursula, c.1505/5, with later additions.

At this point the question of whether nefs were ever repurposed as ex-voto ships (rather than as reliquaries) might naturally arise. A first possible contender is the so-called Golden Ship (‘Goldenes Schiff’) in St. Mary’s parish church at Uelzen in Lower Saxony, which is still relatively unknown among non-German-speaking scholars (Figure 13). ⁸⁰ Fashioned in the first half of the 14th century from copper-gilt and adorned with several cabochons and two, possibly Byzantine, cameos, the vessel is supported by a hexagonal foot and features a crescent- or spoon-shaped, deck-less hull surmounted by a tall, single mast. The latter is square-rigged with a single, billowing sail decorated with a crosswise arrangement of gems, and crowned by a lantern-like crow’s nest topped by a cross. Attempts to identify the ship as either a cog or a hulk (the latter a problematic ship type to begin with ⁸¹ ) have ultimately foundered on the specificity of the hull, with its lack of superstructures, planking and rudder. Scholars generally concur though that, despite its two cruciforms on both sail and mast-top, the Goldenes Schiff was most likely made as a table ornament; indeed, its design presents itself as a cross-over between the crescent-shaped nefs used at the Valois courts and the single-masted table ship in the miniature from the Secretis secretorum (1326–27), which is also surmounted by a cross (Figure 8). The bulbous hull of the Golden Ship would have served as a perfect container for salt, spices or tableware, whilst the mast, sail and rigging would have brought a welcome maritime breeze to every dinner table. Given the fact that the ship is made from copper, a base metal that does not easily lend itself to the elaboration of fine detail, it is probable that it was commissioned by a patron with some, but not endless financial means, perhaps a burgher merchant like the later (and richer) Schlüsselfelders and Landauers of Nuremberg. The Goldenes Schiff is first recorded as hanging in the choir of St. Mary’s in the 1640s, though it must have been presented to the church well before that, certainly before the introduction of the Reformation in Uelzen in 1527, possibly also much earlier. Much has been made of Uelzen’s connections to the Hanseatic League, which it joined in 1374; in fact, a local legend has it that the vessel was presented to the Marienkirche by someone linked to the Hanse’s guildhall in London, the Stalhof, though none of this can in the least be substantiated. While we simply do not know where the ship was made and who, if anyone, brought it to Uelzen from elsewhere, we can hazard an educated guess about its new function in St. Mary’s church. Because its hull is deck-less, the ship would have been less than ideal as a relic container, unless relics had somehow been housed in the lantern-shaped crow’s nest. In the most likely scenario the Goldenes Schiff would have been given to the church as an ex-voto, perhaps by a descendant of the putative burgher merchant who had it made as a table ornament. This would, of course, imply that the ship’s owners had been Uelzeners all along, since none but a local would have wanted to vow such a gift to a parish church in a landlocked and relatively minor Hanseatic town. It is certainly feasible that the donor of the ship was in the employ of the Hanse and that upon surviving a terrible storm at sea due to the perceived intercession of the Virgin he presented the nef in his family’s possession as a thank-offering to St. Mary’s church in his home town.

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Figure 13.

North German goldsmith (?), Goldenes Schiff, c.1300–50.

We step onto greater terra firma with our last example, the spectacular nef in the treasury of St. Antonio in Padua, where it is first mentioned in an inventory of 1537 (Figure 14). ⁸² Given its great similarity to the Schlüsselfelder Schiff (including the twin-tailed mermaid foot) it is likely that it also originated in a Nuremberg workshop during the first decade or so of the 16th century. At most, its voyage from table vessel to church ornament would have taken about 30 to 35 years. Just how the little silver-gilt vessel came to travel from Nuremberg to the Paduan sanctuary is not known. The ship is not recorded to contain, or have contained, relics, but it is probably safe to assume that it was given as a pious offering – perhaps ‘out of a vow’ – to the shrine of St. Anthony. About two-thirds the size of the Schlüsselfeld nef, the vessel likewise replicates a contemporary carrack, though at one point in its career (perhaps right from the outset?), two little trees were planted on its decks, one amidships, the other on the poop. In contrast to its Nuremberg counterpart, which sports only the frames for temporary awnings, the Paduan nef features a canvas tarpaulin over the forecastle and an aftercastle that is entirely boxed in. Like the Nuremberg ship, however, it is populated with the tiny figures of sailors and passengers, which never appear to have been changed out when the vessel became a religious object, unlike those on the Reims nef of St. Ursula. The awning of the forecastle thus shelters a sailor with his bottle of drink, and a knight and his page holding a halberd. A further sailor can be seen climbing down a ladder that leads from the forecastle to the well of the ship, where the holds are closed by winged hatches. Particularly remarkable is the carrack’s transom, which anticipates those of the Baroque men-o’-war of the subsequent century. Adorned below and on its sides with magnificent leaf scrolls, and rising in three stages, the transom is topped by a roofed-over gallery with a tracery frieze and five windows separated from one another by small columns. Two of the windows are closed; through the three open ones peek, from left to right, a soldier or knight holding a sword, and a man and woman apparently making conversation. Literally historiating the various parts of the ship, the statuettes invited their viewers to identify themselves with them, and perhaps piece together an unfolding narrative (or narratives), just like the figures on the Schlüsselfelder Schiff. As on the Nurmberg nef, the now rather atrophied-looking foremast probably initially bore a yard-arm with a billowing sail, so that this little carrack, too, would have been represented in a kind of suspended animation, perhaps leaving for distant shores, or perhaps already making landfall again, taking its initial audiences on manifold journeys of the mind. Of course, once placed into a shrine setting, and perhaps hung from a vault and surrounded by other ex-votos like the nau from the Granollers Retable, the ship would have lost much of its anecdotal appeal and momentum. Its voyage was now a different, upward one, calibrated to convey the vessel’s pious donor – and perhaps one or the other attentive viewer – directly to the heavenly Port of Salvation.

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Figure 14.

Nuremberg goldsmith, (Ex-voto?) Nef, c.1500–10.

Using the ship in the shop as a lens or prism, we have traversed nearly three centuries of the nautical imagination. Some of the ships we have come across were mere cyphers, formal abstractions, others were alluring amalgams of fact and fiction, whereas others still were carefully scaled-down replicas of actual ships. While made for different purposes and contexts, some devotional, some courtly, the ships of this contribution had several things in common. With the exception perhaps of the so-called Mataró Ship, none of them were used anywhere near water. Instead, they came to ‘float’ on dry land (i.e. the princely dinner table) or even up in the air (i.e. suspended above a shrine). They also existed in another dimension of scale that had its own laws and created its own realities. Their strange, Lilliputian presence and their frequent precious materiality made them into things of wonder, causing what Susan Stewart, in her writings on the miniature, calls ‘an affront to reason and its principal sense: the eye’. ⁸³ Bereft of the capacity to swim or sail, the tiny ships of this article were nevertheless machines – machines that animated the imagination of their viewers, and that could simultaneously enliven courtly ceremony and expedite the processes of both physical and spiritual Salvation. Put slightly differently, our ships were vessels of communication that helped orchestrate complex relationships both among their human audiences, and with divine spectators, in this world and with the next. Some were vessels of a more literal sort, in that they carried minuscule amounts of cargo – salt, spices, wine or relics of the 11,000 virgins, perhaps spaced over decades but in one and the same little hull. All were products of a remarkable artistic discourse involving goldsmiths and silversmiths, wax-chandlers, painters, print makers and probably actual shipwrights, and catering to a diverse customer base, from a grateful sailor’s wife in Marseille to the cultivated princelings of the Valois courts and a relic-hoarding cardinal in Reformation Saxony. And all were part of a cultural landscape, now almost lost in time, in which very small objects could achieve very great things.