The South Kensington museum is rich in ivory statuettes: many of them are very beautiful, although none is equal to a large sitting figure of the Virgin in the British museum or to two or three of the finest in the collections at Paris. Almost all of these statuettes represent the Virgin and Child; naturally, this would be a subject most frequently in demand for private oratories. Almost always the Virgin bears the tokens of her spiritual glory and privileges. To adopt the words of a French writer on another class of ivory carvings, “La Vierge mÈre et reine porte glorieuse les trois signes de son incomparable grandeur; la fleur de sa puretÉ immaculÉe, le fruit bÉni qui, loin de flÉtrir, a embelli sa fleur; et la couronne qui a consommÉ ses privilÈges en couronnant ses vertus.”

Generally speaking, the statuettes of the latter part of the thirteenth and throughout the fourteenth century are pure and religious in style, with an admirable expression of love and reverence in the figures, perfectly natural. There are two or three examples in the collections at South Kensington and the British museum, which may well claim all the praise which M. Labarte gives to a group of the coronation of the Virgin and to a Virgin and Child, both now preserved in the Louvre. He speaks of the simplicity of the composition; the refinement and truthfulness of the forms; the appropriate inflexions of the body and limbs; the imitation of real life; the just expression given to the faces; and the natural development and treatment of the draperies. So, again, we may quote his exact words, and say of more than one statuette in these great collections: “Quelle puretÉ dans le dessin, quelle noblesse dans la pose, quelle finesse dans le modÈle, quelle ampleur et quelle ÉlÉgance dans la disposition de la draperie! Cette statuette montrÉ À quel haut degrÉ de perfection Était parvenue la sculpture chrÉtienne À la fin du [quatorziÈme] siÈcle.”

The seals attached to mediÆval deeds are important illustrations of the mode of treatment of the subject of the Virgin and Child, so common in the statuettes of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Take, for instance, some in the Bodleian library. The seal of the prior and convent of Wyrmeseye (Wormegay) in Norfolk, attached to a deed of 1347, has a seated Virgin suckling the Child, her right hand uplifted. Another of the convent of Castle Acre, 1290, a similar subject. Another, of one of the parties to a deed of the archbishop of Canterbury, 1376, has the Virgin sitting, facing, and holding the Child standing on her lap, a sceptre in her right hand; another, showing the peculiar twist of the figure (presently to be noticed) is on the seal of the convent of West Acre, in Norfolk.

There are several also in the British museum: especially a very fine seal of Southwick Priory, early fourteenth century; the Virgin sitting and suckling the Infant, under a canopy of a single arch; another, the same subject, thirteenth century, of Oseney abbey; another, same date, of Elsing Spittle priory, the Virgin standing with the child under a rich canopy.

Sometimes ivory statuettes are still found placed under canopies and with shutters or wings to fold round them, so as either to make shrines for an oratory or, portable, to be carried by the owners on their journeys. More often, examples of this kind are not finished in the back or are still left attached to the ground of the block of ivory, carved however in very high relief. The shrine no. 4686, is a good specimen. When so treated, the shutters are richly decorated on the inside with scenes from the gospels, usually relating to the Nativity or to the Passion of our Lord.

Of this style were the shrines or triptychs at Lincoln, in 1536: “A tabernacle of two leaves, gemmels [hinges] and lock of silver, containing the coronation of our Lady;” and “item, a tabernacle of ivory standing upon four feet with two leaves, with one image of our Lady in the middle, and the salutation of our Lady in one leaf, and the nativity of our Lady in the other.”

There are two remarkable and important illuminations in the manuscript psalter of queen Mary, which has been more than once referred to (p. 74). In one is a shrine, open, with the decorations usual early in the fourteenth century. The centre is divided into two compartments. Above is the Annunciation; the Blessed Virgin and an angel; each under a pointed arch, cusped and crocketed. Below, is the Visitation; Elizabeth and the Virgin meet under a gateway and embrace. The wings are filled with saints, each standing under a pointed arch. This illumination precedes the psalter, following the calendar, after the Old Testament history. The other represents a triptych: in the middle is the Virgin and Child; she is sitting and giving Him the breast; two angels stand by, swinging censers; in each wing is an angel with a candlestick.

The mediÆval artist may have drawn these with examples now in the South Kensington museum before him as his models.

Figures carved in such deep relief as almost to be statuettes occasionally but very rarely occur in diptychs. A remarkable specimen was in the Meyrick collection; an illustration is given (p. 100) of one of the leaves. Probably no diptych exists in any collection equalling this in the depth to which the figures have been cut in relief. Each is brought out from the background three quarters of an inch. On the other leaf is the Virgin and Child. An inscription is incised upon the book which our Lord holds in His left hand: “Ego su. dns. ds tuus Ic. xpc. qi. creavi redemi & salvabo te.” Both figures have great grace and dignity; and the draperies are arranged with unusual simplicity and breadth.

There was also another very curious mode of carving statuettes of the Virgin, of which extant specimens are extremely rare, and none (it is believed) is to be found in England. There is one, well known, in the gallery of the Louvre, engraved in the useful book of M. Viollet le Duc, dictionnaire de mobilier FranÇais. It is a sitting figure of our Lady, who is holding the Infant on her knees. The front part is divided down the middle and two wings fall back on hinges, leaving a centrepiece and forming a triptych of the usual character. There are scenes from the Passion on the wings, and the Crucifixion is carved upon the centre. The date of the ivory is early in the fourteenth century; but the fashion of this kind of statuette can be traced to a much earlier time. An entry in an inventory of the church of Notre Dame at Paris in 1343 mentions one: “quÆdam alia ymago eburnea valde antiqua scisa per medium et cum ymaginibus sculptis in appertura, que solebat poni super magnum altare.”

Occasionally statuettes are mentioned in English inventories; thus in the inventory of Roger de Mortimer, a coffer is included, containing with other things “j parvam imaginem beatÆ Virginis de ebore.” Again, “a lityll longe box of yvery with an ymage of our lady of yvery therein closyd” is named among the goods belonging in 1534 to the guild of St. Mary the Virgin at Boston, in Norfolk.

A very fine statuette of English work, more than nine inches in height, has been for some years on loan to the South Kensington museum; it belonged to the late Mr. Hope Scott, and was formerly Lord Shrewsbury’s. The Virgin is in a sitting position and holds a large flower in her right hand. She wears a crown under which is the veil, and her drapery falls over her knees to the feet in heavy and deeply-carved folds. The face of the Virgin is very beautiful and full of affectionate expression; the head also of the Child is unusually good. The ends of the throne are carved in relief, each with a figure of a female saint sitting under a bold decorated canopy. Many portions of the original gilding remain upon the hair and on the borders of the vestments.

The largest known statuette was in the possession of the late Mr. Alexander Barker; and this is not only remarkable for its size and height but is graceful in design, and from the hand of a good artist. It is French, probably of the Burgundian school, and of the fourteenth century. The Blessed Virgin is standing, carrying the Child; both hold in one hand a fruit, perhaps an apple. The figures are vested much in the same manner as the statuette no. 4685 at South Kensington, and the draperies have gilded borders with a running scroll; the linings of the robes of both are painted dark blue. The hair of the Virgin and of the Infant has been gilded. The perpendicular height of this statuette is twenty-three inches, and the extreme width at the base six inches. The figure is hollow as far as the tusk was so, and slopes to the left in accordance with its natural growth. The height to the girdle is fifteen inches, and the Infant sitting on His mother’s arm measures seven and a half inches. From the chin to the top of the head of the Virgin is three inches. The tusk curves inwards at the waist two inches from a line falling from the back of the head to the lowest part of the drapery which covers the feet.

Every one must have remarked the bend or twist so often given to statues, carved from stone, of the Virgin and of female saints which fill the niches of churches and cathedrals built in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The necessity which obliged the workman in ivory to follow the natural form of the tusk in all statuettes of such a size, or of nearly so great a size, as that which has been just described, certainly did not press upon sculptors whose material was stone and comparatively unlimited. But the position had perhaps become, as it were, a fashion, and the style conventional and pleasing to eyes accustomed daily to see statues so leaning aside in their own oratories.

The same slope or twist is to be seen often in the figure of the Virgin in the centre of the volute of the head of a pastoral staff; where, so far as abundance of material was concerned, there was not the least necessity for any deviation from an upright into an unnatural attitude.

Again, in statuettes in silver or other metal: as, for example, in the silver Virgin and Child in the South Kensington museum; and in another, also silver, standing on the cover of an oblong reliquary, and said to represent Jeanne d’Evreux, queen of France. This last is among the collections of the Louvre.

Before we pass on to another question, it is impossible not to make a few remarks upon one of the most beautiful and affecting of all the works in ivory which have come down to us from mediÆval times. This is a piece, small in size and carved upon both sides, which has probably been in the volute of a bishop’s pastoral staff. On one side is a group of our Lord in the garden of Gethsemane, praying in His agony, and with the apostles lying asleep below. On the other is a second group, a PietÀ; the blessed Virgin seated and holding the dead body of our Lord upon her lap. A woodcut is given of this important sculpture.

Perhaps there are few works of Michael Angelo which have been more praised, or which have excited more enthusiasm than his group of the same subject in St. Peter’s. We will listen for a minute to two or three writers who have especially drawn attention to his famous PietÀ.

One says: “The celebrated PietÀ now adorns the first right-hand chapel on entering the great door of St. Peter’s. It consists of two figures, the Virgin Mother, seated in a dignified attitude, and supporting on her knees a dead Christ, Whom she regards with inexpressible reverence, tenderness, and grief.... Its touching pathos, its dignified conception, and its masterly execution, are incontestable.”

A French critic writes: “Cette PietÀ fut la premiÈre oeuvre de Michel Ange qui l’Éleva au premier rang et apprit son nom À tous les Échos du monde civilisÉ;” and the same author further speaks of the group as having been “the conception” of the artist, and “a creation” of his imagination.

Another writes: “When this group was finished it was universally admired,” and goes on to state that “one of the great sculptors of the present day, our fellow-countryman Gibson, expressed himself in terms of high admiration.”

Once more; a writer upon the Tuscan school: “In this admirable group the dead body of our Lord lies upon the lap of the Madonna, while her left hand is half opened and slightly turned back, with a gesture which carries out the pitying expression of her face. The Christ shows a purity of style and deep feeling, combined with a grandeur which Michel Angelo drew from himself alone.” The same writer tells us a few pages before: “Michael Angelo, who was an enemy to tradition in art, as well as to a positive imitation of nature, took a path diametrically opposed to that followed by the conventionalists, the realists, and the worshippers of the antique.”

We entirely dissent from the unmeasured laudation here given to the famous statue at St. Peter’s. Let the praise of originality of conception, as well as of merit of execution (so far as the size of his material would permit) be given where it is due, to the sculptor of the fourteenth century, who died a hundred years before Michael Angelo was born. Nay, more than this; an unprejudiced comparison will show that where the work of the great Italian differs from the earlier PietÀ, it differs for the worse. In the ivory the position of the head and the cold stiffness of the limbs are more death-like and more solemn than in the marble. In the ivory also the Mother seems to be thinking more of the past pains and sufferings of her Divine Son than of her own sorrows: tenderly she supports the Saviour’s head with her right hand, and, as it were, still clings to Him and draws Him to her with the other; not, as in the marble at Rome, stretching out and opening her hand as if to show her misery and the terrible extent of her bereavement. The mediÆval artist remembered that the sad cry of the prophet in the book of Lamentations referred not to His mother but to Christ: “Was there ever any sorrow like unto my sorrow?”

It was a common practice in the middle ages to colour statuettes and, indeed, also other things, such as triptychs, diptychs, and the covers of writing-tablets. Traces of this colouring are still visible on many examples. The robes and vestments were painted red or blue, with borders of a different colour and often diapered with patterns in gold. The interesting illustration (opposite) of a painter at work upon a statuette, an illumination in a French manuscript of the fifteenth century, is copied from M. Labarte’s work on the industrial arts.

Modern taste runs generally, with regard to this question, in opposition to the old; but we are not, therefore, hurriedly to decide against colour as altogether barbarous or improper. Sculpture, people thought in former days, gained an improved effect by such additional help, and certainly the use of colour was an attempt to give a more real appearance and more true to nature. The carvers in ivory could moreover (if they had known the fact) have appealed to the best period of the Greek school; to the works of Phidias and Praxiteles. The chryselephantine statues in the temples of Athens and Olympia had the same character of ornament and variety of material.

Writers on art who hold that the legitimate province of sculpture is simply to represent by form are inclined to condemn any addition of colour as interfering with that definition. They say that if sculpture be painted it is a mixture of two arts: as it is also if a picture be relieved or raised in any part; after the manner of the Byzantine pictures by Italian painters of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. But it by no means follows that such a mixture is necessarily false in taste; rather it must be left to the judgment and decision of the time and of the country for which the sculptures are made.

A recent contributor to an art periodical, writing of imitation of nature in statues by colour, dogmatises without doubt or hesitation and even goes so far as to say that such statues are “not to be regarded as sculpture. Nor can those representations of the human form which are made to counterfeit life itself, and dressed it may be in the actual attire of the person pourtrayed, be spoken of as sculpture. Regarded from the sculptor’s point of view, such productions can only be regarded in the light of tricks, or, at the best, of clever forgeries of nature.” Criticism such as this seems to want the right quality of discretion.

Although it is quite true that the works of the Greek sculptors, during the two or three hundred years of the greatest perfection to which the art of sculpture has ever reached, are not to be praised as the greatest and most successful of all statues because they were coloured or otherwise made to imitate reality; yet the intention was good, and in obedience to the universal demand and feeling of a people wonderfully fitted by nature, education, and experience to come to a right conclusion on the matter. We are unaccustomed in our own days to statues except those which, whether draped or undraped, are left in the original pure whiteness of the ivory or marble; we think that nothing is to be so much approved as what we call simplicity. We may be right, not only as to what we hold to be pleasing to ourselves, but as to what ought to be pleasing to and held to be correct by every one and in every age. On the other hand, we may not be right after all; and a little more caution and hesitation might be advisable before we condemn, merely as a matter of abstract taste, a practice which seems to have recommended itself to almost every people of the world, as in some way in accordance with the common sentiment of humanity itself; which was accepted by highly civilised nations from the days of the Egyptian and Assyrian kings down to the fifteenth century of the Christian Æra; and which can appeal in its support to artists whose works have ever been acknowledged to be the masterpieces of the world.

It has just been said that the great works of Phidias and his pupils are not to be praised merely because they were coloured nor because no mode of enrichment, gold or jewels or ivory or enamelling, was grudged as being too costly in order to adorn them. So, again, the use of colours is not to be condemned because the statues of some very ancient nations are coarse and rude, or because the idols of the old Mexicans or of the savages of Africa and New Zealand are made by it even more hideous than they would otherwise be. The wide-spread observance of the practice is the point to be considered; and the fact that it rests upon some deep-seated and universal feeling in the mind of all men, of all countries, and of almost every age.

Regarded as a mode of handing down to future generations the memory of much which would have been lost for want of it, who can complain of the careful colouring of mediÆval tombs and monuments? We are indebted to it for exact details of dresses and jewelry and armour: about which there can therefore be no longer any dispute, and which give the answer at once to many difficulties and many interesting subjects of inquiry. Nowadays we should almost shudder at a statue painted and coloured to imitate the muslins and silks worn in Hyde Park by women, and the various coats and trowsers of the men. But five hundred years hence some of our descendants would be grateful if, in spite of our own prejudices, we had given them even one statue among the many of our Queen or of the prince Consort, not left in the bare uncoloured silence of the marble.

Crucifixes in ivory of the middle ages are extremely rare; they may remain still in use in some churches abroad, but whether abroad or at home they are seldom found in the collection of any museum. There is one, although a fragment yet very beautiful, in the South Kensington collection: no. 212. The figure is represented after death; but the still suffering expression of the drooping head, the strained muscles across the breast showing the ribs, and, as it were, the struggle of the legs contracted in the last agony, are admirably given. The eyes are closed, the forehead drawn with pain, the mouth open. The body is clothed with a garment crossed in white folds over the loins and falling to the knees. It is greatly to be regretted that this beautiful figure has been so mutilated. The conception of the artist is full of true feeling and devotion, and his treatment of the subject an excellent example of the right union of conventionality with enough of what is real. As with regard to the heads of pastoral staffs, so also it is not easy to say why mediÆval crucifixes should be so uncommon: for, although there must have been hundreds wilfully destroyed and broken in England in the sixteenth century, the same reason does not apply to other countries, where the demand and the supply both for the churches and for private use must have been continual and almost without limit.

There are numerous records still remaining in our public offices and in the muniment-rooms of many dioceses, which leave us in no doubt as to the extent and completeness of the destruction of the furniture and goods of English churches and cathedrals from the year 1550 to 1570. In the very valuable series of returns made by the commissioners for the county of Lincoln, the lists of items are generally summed up, “with the rest of the trash and tromperie wch appertaynid to the popish service.” Even with respect to objects for which one would have supposed that some slight reverence would have still been felt, such as crucifixes and altars, we have entries like the following in one parish alone: “Item ij altar stones; which is defacid and layd in high waies and sarveth as bridges for sheepe and cattall to go on;” in another, “Item, iij altar stones broken and defacid, thone [the one] solde vnto Thomas Woodcroft, who turned it to a cestron bottom, thother aboute the mending of the church wall and the thirde sett in a fire herthe.”

An unusually good and large ivory crucifix is preserved in the Catholic chapel in Spanish Place, London. It was given to the chapel about thirty years ago but for some time retained by the late cardinal Wiseman, by whose permission it was shown in the Great Exhibition of 1851. The date is, perhaps, late in the seventeenth century; Spanish work; about a foot in height; and the arms of the suspended body are less extended than in the mediÆval times. The figure is coloured with great care to imitate life; blood flows from the wounds, and the streams where they meet are jewelled with small rubies. The flesh of the knees is broken and mangled.

Excellent as this crucifix is as a mere work of art, it utterly fails in calling forth expression of pure religious sentiment. The reality of treatment in the figure of our dying Lord is too near truth, and is at the same time untrue. So far as it has left the old type it has lost power to influence devotion. The earlier conventional crucifix, which left all to the imagination and never aimed at perfectly representing a man dying on a cross, was immeasurably more fitting and more reverential.

The diptychs of the middle ages for public and private devotion have been already spoken of. But besides these, two leaves occur not unfrequently which are strictly diptychs and were used for the same purpose as the pugillares in the old days of imperial Rome. Single plaques are very common, and not only are they usually small in size but may almost always be distinguished from diptychs of the religious class by the form of the reverse or inside page of each leaf. This has been hollowed out to a slight depth, leaving a narrow raised rim or border; and wax was spread over the depressed portion, for writing upon with a pointel or stylus; the other end of which was flattened to erase with. We thus find brought down through fifteen hundred years the practice of the days of Ovid:

The subjects sculptured on the outside of diptychs of this kind generally also give another and a sufficient distinction, being perhaps some domestic scene or a story from a romance, as upon combs or mirror cases. But this is not always so: for writing-tablets occasionally are found with subjects taken from the Holy Scriptures.

A few examples of these writing-tablets have been preserved which have several leaves of ivory inside; although in most instances the plain leaves have been lost and the covers alone remain. A very fine and complete set, of the fourteenth century, with four inner leaves is engraved by Montfaucon (in his great work L’AntiquitÉ expliquÉe) from his own collection, which had scenes carved on it from the romance of Alexander. Montfaucon describes them carefully: “Notre cabinet en a de cette derniÈre matiÈre (d’ivoire), dont les deux couvertures out des bas-reliefs d’un goÛt barbare. Les bords des tabletes sont relevez de tous les cÔtez: ces bords relevez laissent un petit creux pour y placer une cire prÉparÉe, laquelle Élevant un peu le page rendoit une face unie et de niveau avec les bords; on appelloit ces tabletes tabellÆ ceratÆ. On gravoit sur cette cire prÉparÉe ce qu’on vouloit Écrire, et l’on effaÇoit ce qu’on avoit ecrit, ou en y passant fortement dessus l’autre cÔtÉ du style, quand la matiÈre Étoit plus gluante. C’est ce que les anciens appelloient stylum vertere, etc.” Judging from the engraving in Montfaucon’s own book, it would seem that these tablets were the work of a good artist and of the best time of that particular style; and that it was hard to speak of them as “d’un goÛt barbare.”

Ivory writing-tablets were used in the middle ages in England by people of all ranks, and are mentioned in inventories and wills. Chaucer tells us of the preaching friar’s companion:

A characteristic illustration occurs in Shakespeare, in the second part of King Henry the fourth. The archbishop of York says:

It is to be observed that in these quotations both Chaucer and Shakespeare call these diptychs by the name “tables,” a word which had several meanings formerly in England. We have seen already that the game of draughts was so called, and it was also frequently applied in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to carvings in alabaster or to paintings on boards in churches. In 1458 money was bequeathed to the church of Dunwich in Suffolk, “ad novam tabulam de alabastro de historia sanctÆ MargaretÆ,” and a “table of St. Thomas of Ynde” was left in 1510 by Robert Clerk to Batfield church, in Norfolk.

An interesting paper in the ArchÆologia, read before the Society of antiquaries in 1843 by Mr. Albert Way, on the famous golden Tabula of Basle may also be referred to. The writer concludes by expressing his wish that such a monument, then in private hands, “could be deposited in a national collection,” and he complains that “England alone, of all the countries of western Europe, possesses no national collection which exhibits a series of specimens illustrative of the character and progress of the arts of the middle ages, and of the taste and usages of our ancestors.” Happily, this is a complaint which cannot be made now.

Chaplets of ivory beads for private devotion were very common in the middle ages, and are often mentioned in letters and other documents. Some good examples still exist in various collections. The woodcut on the next page represents a set, and a girdle with ivory clasps, in the collection of M. Achille Jubinal.

Another class of small works in ivory was to be found in England from an early period, namely seals. Some have been preserved. One is in the Ashmolean at Oxford; oval, of the archdeaconry of Merioneth, in the thirteenth century; another, walrus ivory, of the abbey of St. Alban is in the British museum.

Robert Fabyan the chronicler, in his will dated 1511 leaves to one of his sons “that other signet of gold, with my puncheon of ivory and silver.”

There are several very fine horns in the South Kensington collection, more especially no. 7954, engraved in the accompanying woodcut, and which is unequalled by any other of its kind known. The style and workmanship are rare; one, probably by the same hand, was lately in the possession of a noble English family. The horns which we find frequently mentioned in mediÆval wills and inventories are hunting horns. For example, Sir John de Foxle in 1378 leaves to the king his great bugle horn, ornamented with gold. “The ivory horn of St. Oswald the king” was preserved at Durham in the year 1383. Near the end of the thirteenth century there were two ivory horns kept in the treasury of St. Paul’s: “Item, cornu eburneum gravatum bestiis et avibus, magnum. Item, aliud cornu eburneum planum et parvum.”

A common term anciently in England for these horns was “olifant,” from the name then usually given to the elephant; for instance, the amusing story in the old life of St. Clement in Caxton’s Golden Legend: “When Barnabe came to Rome prechynge y^e fayth of Jesu Christ, the philosophers mocked hym and despysed hys predicacyon and in scorne put to hym this questyon sayenge, What is y^e cause y^e culex whyche is a lytell beest hath vj. feet and two wynges and an olyphaunte whyche ys a grete beest hath but foure feete and no wynges,” etc. St. Barnabas replied that it was a foolish question and needed no answer—the more especially as they knew not the Creator and must necessarily, therefore, be ignorant about his creatures.

There is only one horn at South Kensington which can be regarded as having been a tenure horn. It is possible that no. 7953 (see the etching) may have been a horn of that kind. Several of these tenure horns are still preserved in England and were shown in the loan exhibition of 1862. Among them the most famous are the horn of Ulphus, in the treasury at York; the horns given by Henry the first to the cathedral at Carlisle; and the Pusey horn. The ivory hunting horn (so-called) of Charlemagne is kept at Aix la Chapelle; and another said to have been Roland’s in the cathedral at Toulouse.

It will be observed by those who examine the catalogue of the ivories in the South Kensington museum that more are attributed to the fourteenth century than to any other, and this would be correct with regard also to the collection in the British museum, or at Liverpool, or abroad. Sculpture in ivory was very general and greatly patronised at that time; and, with the exception of a very few examples of Roman art under the emperors, there are no carvings existing which equal those made from about the year 1280 to 1350, either in truth and gracefulness of design or in excellence of workmanship.

We find also in carvings of that period the best examples of the very beautiful open or pierced work which has been already spoken of: and an illustration has before been given (p. 64) from a series of small panels in the Meyrick collection. No apology will be required for adding here two more woodcuts from ivories of the same character. Both are engraved of the exact size of the originals.

One of these contains two compartments from the splendid plaque, no. 366, in the South Kensington collection.

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The other is a complete row from a book cover in the British museum: divided into thirty compartments, each an inch by three quarters of an inch. It is impossible in a woodcut to do more than attempt to give some idea of the marvellous delicacy and excellence of the panel itself, which is beyond all comparison the very finest ivory existing of its peculiar school. Small, even minute, as the divisions are, they plainly tell the story which each is intended to convey; although in some of them there are as many as seven or eight figures, finished with admirable distinctness and perfection. The subjects in this row are the offering of St. Joachim; his departure into the desert; the message of the angel to St. Joachim; the message to St. Anne; the meeting of St. Joachim and St. Anne at the gate; and the birth of the Blessed Virgin. The etching represents some beautiful panels in open work, at South Kensington.

Nothing is more difficult than the determination of the particular country in which many of the ivories of mediÆval times were carved. All acknowledge this, and they the most readily who have had the widest experience and the best opportunities of examination. It has long been a custom to set down almost every ivory of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries as Flemish or French, leaving but few except the Italian marriage caskets to the credit of other countries. But (not to speak of Germany) there can be no question that carvings in ivory were then much sought after and bought in England, and that there must have been numerous English artists. Two unquestionable examples of the English school of the fourteenth century are in the British museum: a triptych which was carved for Grandison, bishop of Exeter; and one leaf of a diptych which was also made for the same great prelate, and still retains slight traces of the painting of his coat of arms. A woodcut is given (p. 117) of the single leaf. Generally, we may agree with Sir Digby Wyatt, who says in the very interesting and able lecture to which reference has been already made (p. 5), that “a peculiar nez retroussÉ, a dimpled, pouting, and yet smiling mouth, a general gentillesse of treatment, and a brilliant yet rapid mode of technical execution, stamp the French work with an almost unmistakable character. To the English style may be assigned a position midway between the French and the second Italian manner. It does not exhibit the gaiety and tenderness of the former, nor has it quite the grandeur of the latter, but it is marked by a sober earnestness of expression in serious action which neither of those styles possesses.” We may further observe that the English school had less of the monotony and mannerism which are the derogatory features of continental examples of the same period; in fact, English gothic ivories have both a purity and a variety of treatment on a par with the admirable characteristics of contemporary architecture in this country.

The names of mediÆval artists in ivory are almost entirely unknown. Sir Digby Wyatt and Labarte say that they have been able to meet with the name of one only, that of Jean Lebraellier, who was carver to Charles V. of France, and is mentioned in the inventory of that monarch as having executed “deux grans tableaux d’yvoire des troys Maries.” We may venture to add the name of one other, the carver of a pax in the British museum, Jehan Nicolle; whose work, unlike the “tables” of Lebraellier, fortunately still exists. His name is incised upon the pax in capital letters; there is also a shield, bearing a hammer behind two crossed swords.

Very few Spanish ivories of the middle ages can be referred to, and those which we possess have a very distinct Moorish or Arabic character about them. They are generally caskets or boxes (see the etching), and some are still to be found in the treasuries of churches in Spain. Strangely enough, it is said that there are more remaining in the north and north-west of Spain, where the Moors did not obtain any permanent footing, than in the south; in Andalusia or Granada. Probably this is owing not only to the circumstance that when taken to other parts of the country they were regarded as valuable curiosities, but also more especially because of the natural prejudice in the south against keeping works of Moorish art and manufacture as reliquaries or pyxes, or for any religious use. In the north of Spain there seems to have been no obstacle in the way of enclosing relics of a Christian saint in coffers upon which Arabic inscriptions had been carved in honour of Allah and his prophet. But we must remember that these inscriptions were in an unknown language.

Some of the ancient Spanish ivories are as old as the days of the Cordovan caliphs in the ninth and tenth centuries; a fact which we are now able to decide from the Arabic inscriptions. But where such evidence is wanting there is scarcely any guide to direct us in fixing the date: the ivories may have been carved at almost any time down to the conquest of Granada by Ferdinand and Isabella. Moorish art, like the Egyptian or Chinese, changed but little from age to age; the old process and the old patterns were handed down, unaltered, from father to son; and ivory carvings may have been made in various parts of Spain by Moorish workmen as late even as the end of the sixteenth century.

It can scarcely be out of place, before we end, to add one word of warning with regard to forgeries of ivory carvings. These are sometimes so well done that even experienced persons might be deceived. Generally, the period chosen for imitations is what is commonly called the Carlovingian, or a little earlier; for not only are genuine pieces rare and valuable, but being often coarse and rude in style are more easily to be executed. Forgeries of consular diptychs have been frequently made; and with regard to one of these it is well to place on record the following facts which have been kindly supplied by Mr. A. W. Franks, of the British museum.

“The leaf of the diptych of the consul Anastasius, now in the South Kensington museum, was exhibited to the Society of antiquaries, March 10, 1864, and described by me in the proceedings of the society (2nd series, vol. 2, p. 364) as the diptychon Leodiense. The other leaf was known to have been for some years in the museum at Berlin. It was therefore with considerable surprise that in the course of the summer of 1864, I found exhibited in the MusÉe de la Porte de Hal at Brussels a large ivory diptych purporting to be the diptychon Leodiense. Having been asked by a friend at Brussels my opinion on the recent acquisition of the Belgian government, I ventured to express some doubts in the presence of a gentleman who proved to be at the head of the commission, at whose recommendation the purchase had been made.

“I advised that the ivories should be taken out of the wooden frames into which they were fixed, and that the inscriptions known to have been on the genuine diptych should be sought for. On this being done, the falsity of the diptych became evident, the ivory at the back being fresh and not hollowed out for the reception of wax.

“An action was thereupon brought against the vendor, a dealer at LiÉge, and after some delay the amount paid by the Belgian government (£800) was recovered. The diptych had been copied from the engraving in Wilthem’s work, and not from the original leaves, and this accounted for various errors in the details.”

It seems strange that the Belgian authorities should have bought at so great a sum ivories fixed in wooden frames, without some suspicion or at least without examination. The LiÉge dealer, however, is not the only one who has attempted impositions of this kind. About ten years ago there were four or five large ivories, of splendid appearance, in the hands of some London dealers. One was a triptych; another a diptych; a third a comb; and a fourth was a huge shrine with folding shutters and a tall richly decorated canopy, like the spire of a cathedral, covering a statuette of the Virgin and Child. (The statuette was probably genuine.) These ivories purported to be of the fourteenth century but were all new, and out of one shop or manufactory. The forgery in some respects was successful; but in every piece there was a distinct character and manner of execution—the same exactly in all of them—which proved their falseness. Several were traced back to a dealer at Amiens; and it is not now known what has become of any of them. The great shrine having been sold to an English collector for £500 was returned; and not very long ago was still to be seen in a shop window in the Strand and said to be, as if to make confusion worse confounded, an ivory carving of the tenth century. This, whilst it would show perhaps ignorance on the part of the possessor, would be an argument that he might be innocent of knowledge of the forgery.

The public institutions in England in which important ivories may be found are the British museum, the Ashmolean and Bodleian at Oxford, and the museum given to the town of Liverpool with noble liberality by Mr. Joseph Mayer. It is worthy of remark that scarcely any addition has been made to the ivories in the Ashmolean since the time when they were originally collected by Elias Ashmole nearly two hundred years ago; and they are of especial interest and value, though not many in number, because they can reasonably claim with scarcely an exception to be of English workmanship. A very large proportion of the other three great collections had also been gathered together before they became the property of the nation. The Liverpool ivories were chiefly obtained from the representatives of the late Gabriel FejÉrvÁry; and, in like manner, the South Kensington museum—begun about the year 1853 and gradually enriched by the acquisition of some rare Spanish ivories and some of the best pieces from the Soltikoff collection, selected with excellent judgment by Mr. J. C. Robinson—has received from time to time during the last four or five years many large and important additions from the collection made by John Webb, Esq. More than two-thirds of the ivories in the British museum, and certainly a large number of the most valuable, had also been previously collected by a private person.

THE END.

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