Ivory (Art)

IVORY (ART). - Ivory artifacts are frequent in ancient Christian funerary furnishings; they were often affixed to the loculi in the underground cemeteries as a means of identification or as decorative elements. These are mostly tokens, discs or cubes for games, often articulated dolls, small plaques, small valves, combs, etc. Later, however, ivories appear for the decoration of cathedrae (v.), caskets, capsellae (v.), reliquaries (v.), diptychs (v.), covers of gospel books, pyxes (v.), pastoral staffs (v.), etc., with representations drawn from the Old or New Testament or other iconographic scenes. The craftsmen belonged especially to the Hellenistic schools of Alexandria, Antioch and Constantinople, and the ivory cathedra of Bishop Maximian of Ravenna (545-56) is, by the number of its scenes, the most distinguished product of them.

In the East, during the iconoclastic struggle, religious subjects were abandoned in ivory sculpture, and in the production of objects for civil use, especially caskets (v.), an iconographic repertoire appeared drawn essentially from classical antiquity and from Eastern art. In the West, at the court of the Carolingians, ivories were meanwhile produced in which a very vivid plastic feeling is asserted (e.g., the "Pax of Duke Ursus," late 8th century).

Between the 10th and 11th centuries and then in the 12th, while in the East the Byzantine style reappears in ivory carvings of religious subject in all its noble compositional grandeur (Harbaville Triptych of the Louvre), this kind of plastic activity flourished also in Germany. Linked to that Ottonian flowering is a group of ivories, perhaps Lombard, the most famous of which is the bucket of Bishop Gotifred (974-98) from the cathedral of Milan.

During the Romanesque period, in Germany with its center at Cologne, in Spain, and also in Italy, works in ivory were executed that reflect the new stylistic currents. Here in our country, especially in the south (Paliotto of Salerno) and in Sicily, where the reflections of Eastern art were most vivid.

The Gothic taste brought the practice of carving ivory back into great honor in France, and works of the highest quality were then executed.

From this point on, the characteristics of ivory sculpture do not differ stylistically from those of other sculptures, as, for various reasons, they had during the early Middle Ages. Thus in the Madonna of the cathedral of Pisa by Giovanni Pisano (1299). And not only in Italy, but also in France, bone was often substituted for ivory (v. EMBRIACHI).

Masterpieces of ivory sculpture of the Italian Renaissance are the reliefs of the cathedral of Graz that translate drawings by Mantegna. By now the working of ivory is reserved for specialized craftsmen who translate models or copy the works of great sculpture, and in vain will one try to assign illustrious names to works that are technically perfect but not original in conception. Admirable examples of ivories of the Renaissance and of the Baroque age are found in Florence in the Museo Nazionale and in the Museo degli Argenti, in Munich in the National-Museum, in Vienna in the Kunsthistorisches Museum. - See Plates XXXV-XXXVI.