The battered casket, originally a secular object, probably survived because it was subsequently used as a church reliquary.
Picasso: No, seriously, the fan was chosen because it is a symbol of femininity, because it balances the picture compositionally, and because I posed her hand in the classic religious position referencing Leonardo's "Madonna of the Rocks," except I wanted her to be holding a secular object.
The worldly achievements of James Bartholomew Cummings AM, known as "the cup king" in the racing world, were honoured by the inclusion of a powerful secular object: the Melbourne Cup won in 1996 by Saintly.
In early times, like bronze, it was mainly used for religious purposes, but it later came to be employed for a variety of secular objects, principally those intended to furnish the scholar's table, such as brush-pots, ink-slabs, water-droppers, table-screens, and paper-weights.
The Tami style, as it is seen on secular objects, is characterized by depiction of a wide variety of animal figures (crocodile, turtle, lizard, fish, pig) in a highly stylized manner.
We are in the early centuries of the larger Byzantine empire, and themes from antiquity — Dionysian revelers, Herculean hunters — are still present in many secular objects.
Dating from the 11th to the 16th century, more than 75 ecclesiastical and secular objects from the Basel Cathedral will be reunited beginning tomorrow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
There are also secular objects of adornment, like headbands, girdles, belts, cummerbunds and square beaded pendants called "keepers of the heart".
The April show, she said, will consist solely of secular objects: Hopi figurines, Navajo weavings and, perhaps most prized, American Indian pottery.
A secular Jew, he became the object of her anti-Semitic rage.
Together the two exhibitions present a multichambered curiosity cabinet of sacred objects in a secular context.
