Reliquary tabernacles are small-scale painted panels, designed to enshrine relics within their surface, with the relic chambers arranged around the margins of the image. Eight such single panels and three triptychs survive, all of which can be associated with fourteenth-century Siena. While previous scholarship has already drawn attention to single panels, Beth Williamson's meticulously researched and highly engaging monograph offers the first attempt to consider these objects together as a group, as well as to investigate their development on a broader scale. The book is divided into two main parts: ‘Making’ and ‘Meaning’. The first part helps to lay out the chronology of the tabernacles, explores their diverse artistic connections to metalwork and painting and considers their dual role as paintings as well as reliquaries. Beside these questions, the earliest examples are also analysed in detail separately. This in turn foregrounds the complex questions regarding the meaning of these tabernacles on which the second part of the book focuses, such as the creation of new iconographies, the role of the relics and the bricolage nature of these artworks. While some of the discussion from the first half is primarily of interest to art historians, the new iconographies which the panels projected, their use in private and potentially also communal devotion, and their interaction with relic cults make this book highly relevant also for scholars of ecclesiastical history.

While more traditional aspects of research such as form, style and iconography are examined, materiality provides a useful framework which underpins the examination of these objects. Materiality has begun to emerge at the forefront of art historical research only relatively recently, and this shows a fresh methodological approach. But the usefulness of this perspective goes beyond a simple methodological consideration, as the most fascinating trait of the Sienese reliquary tabernacles lies in their multi-media composition, which deliberately combines wood, paint, gilding, rock crystal, glass, ivory reliefs and, of course, the material of the relics themselves. Thus, given the eye-catching nature of these objects, there is an internal tension between materiality and visuality in reliquary tabernacles. Unfortunately, in most cases the relics have been lost. But when they do survive, they can be quite meaningful for the overall context. For example, Naddo Ceccarelli's Baltimore Tabernacle presents a concentration on stone. It not only contains numerous stone relics but also depicts the Madonna standing on a marble slab in the central image which evokes a Christian altar stone. This, as Williamson convincingly argues, helps to highlight the Virgin's role as a tabernacle herself.

Williamson's book makes numerous important contributions, both for particular objects but also in terms of more overarching questions for the group, regarding the creation, materiality, visuality and function of these objects. The provenance is obscure for most of the surviving examples. Their potential link to the Augustinian friars, the Ospedale and the circle of Simone Martini, a leading figure of the ‘thinking outside of the box’ artistic culture which characterised trecento Siena, offers a viable approach to shedding more light on the obscure origins of the Sienese reliquary tabernacles. Moreover, Williamson also pays ample attention to the potential audience of these objects and how they might have been used. The initial discussion on the interplay between visibility and materiality (as well as appearance and reality) foregrounds the discussion of how they could have aided in establishing meditations for their viewers.

Portability is another key characteristic of the Sienese reliquary tabernacles. Williamson argues that the single panels were consciously designed to operate at two different levels of proximity, depending on whether they were used for personal devotion or carried in processions. Taking into consideration the mobility, as well as the re-use of materials in the tabernacles are some of the strongest features of the book. Three key concepts: spolia, bricolage and varietas are employed to structure the discussion on the incorporation of relics and multi-media materials in the tabernacles, and to show how ultimately the value of the relics themselves transcended the material value that enriched these reliquaries. This highly informative book therefore not only sheds brighter light on the reliquary tabernacles of fourteenth-century Siena, but also sets up numerous inquiries into broader questions of religious materiality, visibility, devotional practice, all the while considering the combination of material relics and painted space from a fresh perspective.