ABSTRACT
Reliquaries – precious containers designed to preserve, conceal and heighten attraction of relics – have meanwhile become focus of intense scrutiny both from an anthropological and from a historical point of view. Equally disregarded is treasury attached to a pilgrimage site where votive gifts, juxtaposing artefacts of enormous financial value and humble personal articles, are displayed as part of the pilgrimage experience. A hilltop town in the Marche area of Italy to the south-west of Ancona, Loreto is dominated by a magnificent basilica built from 1468 onwards around a small single-chamber vernacular building. Orest Ranum draws an implied comparison between the Santa Casa in its ornamental relievo casing and grotto encrusted with natural objects, as a place of wonderment. The nothing-to-be-seen of interior of the Santa Casa could be superficially compensated for by statue of the Virgin, situated in the sanctuary at East End of the Santa Casa; this statue was always covered with jewellery: votive offerings laid over 'dalmatica'.
