Écrin du cœur d’Anne de Bretagne
Blois (?), 1514 
Or rehaussé d’émail.
H.15 cm ; l. 12,5 cm.
Auteur anonyme, 1514 
Nantes, Musée départemental Dobrée

@credits

According to her will, Anne de Bretagne’s heart was placed in a raised enamel gold reliquary, then transported to Nantes to be deposited, on 19 March 1514, in the vault of the Carmelite friars, in the tomb made for her parents, later being transferred to the Saint-Pierre cathedral. The reliquary of the heart of the Anne, Duchess of Brittany is a box oval, bivalvular, made of a sheet of gold pushed back and guillochéd, articulated by a hinge, broadside of a gold cordelière and topped by a crown of lily and clover. It is inscribed as follows:

En ce petit vaisseauDe fin or pur et mundeRepose ung plus grand cueurQue oncque dame eut au munde Anne fut le nom delleEn France deux fois royneDuchesse des BretonsRoyale et Souveraine.

It was made by an anonymous goldsmith of the court of Blois, perhaps drawn by Jean Perréal. In 1792, by order of the National Convention, the reliquary was exhumed, emptied, and seized as part of a collection of precious metals pertaining to churches, and sent to Nantes to be melted down. However, it was instead kept in the National Library, and was returned to Nantes in 1819, being kept in various museums, and in the Dobrée Museum since 1896.