and that of Christ in the bronze plaque with the Crucifixion on the portal of S. Zeno in Verona. The latter crown may resemble a turreted enclosure like the famous candelabrum of Hildesheim, which dates from the 11th century.
Indeed, beginning in the 11th century, crowns changed in style, both because of the desire for novelty common to the peoples of the Roman age and because they were made more showy or imposing to better distinguish those who had the right to wear them.
Thus the crown of St Stephen, of the kings of Hungary, which is partly a Byzantine work of the 11th century, and the so-called crown of Charlemagne, now in the Schatzkammer in Vienna, a Siculo-Byzantine work of art, perhaps created for the coronation of Conrad II (1027), made with gold plaques, stones, enamels and filigree, very high at the front and surmounted by a crest also encrusted with gems.
On the other hand, the naturalistic elements introduced into sculpture, and consequently into goldsmithing, during the Romanesque period, accentuated in the 12th and 13th centuries with the spread of Gothic taste, meant that crowns were now adorned especially with decorative elements drawn from flora, and it is leaves and flowers, stylised, that prevail in them. Thus in the crown known as that of Emperor Henry II in the Residenzmuseum in Munich, and in the crowned figures carved by Wiligelmo and then by Antelami in Parma and Modena, and in the others painted or carved during that period. And it is precisely the floral elements, which evolved during the 13th and 14th centuries, that take on the appearance of lilies in the crowns that adorned the heads of the kings of France during the 1300s, as seen in the panel painted by Simone Martini, now in the picture gallery of the museum in Naples, depicting St Louis of Toulouse placing the royal crown on the head of his brother Robert. The type spread widely and was also used to crown sacred images such as the Madonna of Acuto (Rome, museum of the Palazzo Venezia). During the 15th century, crowns often took on more modest proportions and were generally made of a metal strip with points culminating in a pearl (e.g., the one that adorns the head of Queen of Cyprus, Catherine Cornaro, in the portrait by Gentile Bellini that is in the museum in Budapest).
With the 16th century and the following centuries, crowns once again changed style but were generally made of a gem-studded circlet surmounted by a cap of fabric protected by metal strips or plaques joined at the top by a gem or a globe surmounted by a cross (e.g., the crown of the Habsburgs made by David Altenstetter in 1602, now in the Schatzmuseum in Vienna, the one for the coronation of Napoleon by Nitto now in the Louvre, the modern crown of the kings of England). Similar crowns were also used to adorn the heads of the Virgin and the Redeemer in sacred carved images, such as those crowning the head of the Madonna and Child in the statue by Sansovino in the church of S. Agostino in Rome. — See plates XXVI-XXVII.