Brescia Casket

The 36 subjects depicted on the box represent a wide range of the images found in the evolving Christian art of the period,[3] and their identification has generated a great deal of art-historical discussion, though the high quality of the carving has never been in question.

According to one scholar: "despite an abundance of resourceful and often astute exegesis, its date, use, provenance, and meaning remain among the most formidable and enduring enigmas in the study of early Christian art.

[5] One theory, discussed below, identifies the date very precisely to soon after 386, when Ambrose successfully led the Orthodox population in a confrontation with the Arian-leaning Imperial court.

A young beardless Jesus is agreed to occupy the centre of the front panel, and he is probably surrounded by the Twelve Apostles, with Saint Paul substituting for Judas, making 13.

[13] However recent studies have proposed that the casket in fact shows a coherent and carefully thought out programme, comprehending both Old and New Testament scenes, though the underlying aims of this have been interpreted differently.

[14] For Carolyn Joslin Watson, in a thesis of 1977 and an article in Gesta in 1981, the key to the programme lies in Milanese church politics of the time, and Ambrose's battle with the Arians.

For Catherine Brown Tkacz, in a book of 2001, the main purpose of the programme is to state through typology the essential unity of the two parts of the Christian Bible, an aim common in later medieval art, which was previously thought not to have been found so early.

This has only one Christian scene, with others from northern myth and Mediterranean history, and includes texts which mingle Latin and Old English in both Roman letters and Anglo-Saxon runes.

However it shares with the Brescia Casket great programmatic complexity, and an equal ability to arouse scholarly debate; it seems clear that the full meaning of both boxes would have represented a puzzle, or riddle, even to well-educated contemporaries used to the iconographies of their respective periods.