The Treasury Image of Mariazell: The Materialisation of Hope, Assurance and Security

Abstract

One of the key sacred objects at the Austrian pilgrimage shrine of Mariazell is the Schatzkammerbild or Treasury Image, a late fourteenth-century painting of the Virgin and child in the style of a metal-encased and adorned Byzantine icon. Originally commissioned by King Louis I of Hungary, it was later donated to Mariazell. This essay traces significant changes in the life of this precious object over approximately four centuries, focusing on how its materiality was meant to stimulate feelings of hope and assurance concerning public security. From votive image given in thanks for a miraculous victory, it was transformed into a powerful heavenly object to be used against the threats of Ottoman and Protestant enemies. Then from the 1670s it began to be appropriated by its Habsburg patrons as an assurance of the security they could provide against individual and collective threat, as King Louis had done in the past.