came into their hands. Many of them were Greek immigrants
exiled at the time of the iconoclastic persecutions. To these
must be added the Celtic and Anglo-Saxon missionaries, who
brought with them and disseminated their own national feeling
and technique. We have to take into account also the relations
which existed not only with Constantinople but also with the
great governing provinces of Syria and Egypt. Where all our
information is so vague, and in the face of so much conflicting
opinion amongst authorities, it is not unreasonable to hold with
regard to very many of these ivories that instead of assigning
them to the age of Justinian or even the preceding century we
ought rather to postpone their dating from one to perhaps three
centuries later and to admit that we cannot be precise even
within these limits. It would be impossible to follow here the
whole of the arguments relating to this most important period
of the development of ivory sculpture or to mention a tithe of the
examples which illustrate it. Amongst the most striking the
earliest is the very celebrated leaf of a diptych in the British
Museum representing an archangel (fig. 6). It is generally
admitted that we have no ivory
of the 5th or 6th centuries or in
fact of any early medieval period
which can compare with it in
excellence of design and workmanship.
There is no record (it
is believed) from whence the
museum obtained the ivory.
There are at least plausible
grounds for surmising that it is
identical with the “Angelus
longus eburneus” of a book-cover
among the books brought
to England by St Augustine
which is mentioned in a list of
things belonging to Christchurch,
Canterbury (see Dart, App. p.
xviii.). The dating of the four
Passion plaques, also in the
British Museum, varies from the
5th to the 7th century. But
although most recent authorities
accept the earlier date, the
present writer holds strongly that
they are not anterior to, at
earliest, the 7th century. Even
then they will remain, with the
exception of the Monza oil flask
and perhaps the St Sabina doors,
the earliest known representation
of the crucifixion. The ivory
vase, with cover, in the British
Museum, appears to possess defined
elements of the farther
East, due perhaps to the relations
between Syria and Christian India or Ceylon. Other
important early Christian ivories are the series of pyxes,
the diptych in the treasury of St Ambrogio at Milan, the
chair of Maximian at Ravenna (most important as a type
piece), the panel with the “Ascension” in the Bavarian
National Museum, the Brescia casket, the “Lorsch” bookcovers
of the Vatican and Victoria and Albert Museum, the Bodleian
and other bookcovers, the St Paul diptych in the Bargello at
Florence and the “Annunciation” plaque in the Trivulzio
collection. So far as unquestionably oriental specimens of
Byzantine art are concerned they are few in number, but we have
in the famous Harbaville triptych in the Louvre a super-excellent
example.
 |
| Fig. 7.—Mirror Case, illustrating the Storming of the Castle of Love; in the Victoria and Albert Museum. |
Gothic Ivories.—The most generally charming period of ivory sculpture is unquestionably that which, coincident with the Gothic revival in art, marked the beginning of a great and lasting change. The formalism imposed by Byzantine traditions gave place to a brighter, more delicate and tenderer conception. This golden age of the ivory carver—at its best in the 13th century—was still in evidence during the 14th, and although there is the beginning of a transition in style in the 15th century, the period of neglect and decadence which set in about the beginning of the 16th hardly reached the acute stage until well on into the 17th. To review the various developments both of religious art which reigned almost alone until the 14th century, or of the secular side as exemplified in the delightful mirror cases and caskets carved with subjects from the romantic stories which were so popular, would be impossible here. Almost every great museum and famous private collection abounds in examples of the well-known diptychs and triptychs and little portable oratories of this period. Some, as in a famous panel in the British Museum, are marvels of minute workmanship, others of delicate openwork and tracery. Others, again, are remarkable for the wonderful way in which, in the compass of a few inches, whole histories and episodes of the scriptural narratives are expressed in the most vivid and telling manner. Charming above all are the statuettes of the Virgin and Child which French and Flemish art, especially, have handed down to us. Of these the Victoria and Albert Museum possesses a representative collection. Another series of interest is that of the croziers or pastoral staves, the development of which the student of ivories will be careful to study in connexion with the earlier ones and the tau-headed staves. In addition there are shrines, reliquaries, bookcovers, liturgical combs, portable altars, pyxes, holy water buckets and sprinklers, flabella or liturgical fans, rosaries, memento mori, paxes, small figures and groups, and almost every conceivable adjunct of the sanctuary or for private devotion. It is to French or Flemish art that the greater number and the most beautiful must be referred. At the same time, to take one example only—the diptych and triptych of Bishop Grandison in the British Museum—we have evidence that English ivory carvers were capable of rare excellence of design and workmanship. Nor can crucifixes be forgotten, though they are of extreme rarity before the 17th century. A most beautiful 13th-century figure for one—though only a fragment—is in the Victoria and Albert Museum. Amongst secular objects of this period, besides the mirror cases (fig. 7) and caskets, there are hunting horns (the earlier ones probably oriental, or more or less faithfully copied from oriental models), chess and draughtsmen (especially the curious set from the isle of Lewis), combs, marriage coffers (at one period remarkable Italian ones of bone), memorandum tablets, seals, the pommels and cantles of saddles and a
