KING OF THE CONFESSORS the Quest for the Bury St Edmunds Cross

Thomas Hoving

ISBN 10: 0241106745 / ISBN 13: 9780241106747

Published by Hamish Hamilton, GB, 1981

Maroon cloth, gilt. Book is in very fine condition with virtually no signs of wear and/or age. Dustwrapper/dustjacket is in very good plus condition with very minor signs of wear and/or age. The spine is faded and the wrapper is price clipped. Seller Inventory # tem025.011

Synopsis:

In the spring of 1955, after eight centuries of silence, a mysterious work of art – one of the most beautiful and enigmatic ever created in world history – suddenly turned up in the hands of a strange and secretive collector. At the very moment the collector discreetly announced that he might sell the object, a quiet, bitter contest for possession began among some of the world’s most powerful art museums. Since nothing was known about the work of art, a competition arose to find out where and when the object had been created, where and how it had been hidden for so long, and what its true significance was. In 1960, Thomas Hoving, then a young assistant curator at the Cloisters, the medieval branch of the Metropolitan, burning with ambition, joined the quest for the mysterious object. The work, an ivory cross, was hidden in a vault in Zurich, known only to a few of the world’s art experts, and in the possession of one Ante Topic Mimara, a wealthy and eccentric Yugoslav collector known to have offered many obvious fakes for sale in the museums throughout the world. The cross, claimed by Mimara to have been made in Winchester in the twelfth century, was inscribed not with the traditional inscription ‘Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews’, but ‘Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Confessors’. On the hunch that such an unusual inscription could not be a forgery, Hoving tossed aside the dismissals of his colleagues and began his pursuit of the mysterious Topic Mimara and his cross. The chase took him into the clandestine world of international art dealing; through an intensive search for the true origin and meaning of the cross; into a desperate competition with curators from the British Museum, the Louvre, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Cleveland Museum, to possess a work of incomparable importance and value, a masterpiece so astonishing that it profoundly affected the lives of everyone who came into contact with it.

Bibliographic Details

Title: KING OF THE CONFESSORS the Quest for the ...
Publisher: Hamish Hamilton, GB
Publication Date: 1981
Binding: Hardback
Condition: Fine
Dust Jacket Condition: VG+ Pc DW
Edition: 1st Edition.