Having decided that the figure is intended for a lady, there remains the vexed question of who she is. Molinier thinks she is of Byzantine origin, not wrought with the delicate art of the tenth to the eleventh centuries, but earlier and coarser, and going through the various historic characters in search of a name, he attributes the portrait to the Empress Irene, widow of Leo IV., and long Regent for her ten-year-old son Constantine IV., for she alone would dare to be portrayed throned, and with all the attributes of sovereignty. It was Irene who, in the middle of the Iconoclastic period, convened a council of the Church, repealed the new laws, and encouraged the use of religious images throughout her realm.
This attribution would bring the date of the diptych down to the end of the eighth century, and later than the style would seem to warrant; and it is vigorously opposed by Graeven, who declares that after the first half of the sixth century, there were no more purely secular representations; and that the coins of Irene represent her with both diadem and sceptre surmounted by a cross.
To this may be added the affinity of the architecture with that on diptychs of the early sixth century, as the eagles on the top, which are exactly like those surmounting the Bourges (No. 39) and St. Gregory (No. 44) diptychs. Also the columns with tightly wound curtains are extremely near in design to those on the tablets of the Poet and Muse at Monza (No. 63). Curtains, however, with horizontal stripes were fairly constant all through early art, but were less used in strictly Byzantine Art than in any other.
ALINARI PHOTO.][BARGELLO, FLORENCE
5. LEAF OF THE DIPTYCH OF AMALASUNTHA(?)
Italian, sixth century
Graeven having given good reasons for placing this ivory in the first half of the sixth century, suggests that it represents Amalasuntha, daughter of Theodoric, who, by right of conquest and the reluctant consent of the Emperor of the East, was King of Italy from 493-526; and who, by good government, had brought about some measure of order, and induced a slight renaissance of the arts. Amalasuntha governed at Pavia in the name of her young son Athalric ([Fig. 5]).
Graeven suggests that these two are also represented in the medallions on the diptych of Orestes ([Fig. 4]). Athalric is represented without a diadem, like his grandfather on the gold medal, and he wears a coat in Gothic fashion, like that on the coins of Theodatus, his successor, and his mother’s second husband. Amalasuntha attempted to control Theodatus in the same manner as her dead son, but he resented the interference and had her murdered, thus severing the last link with the enlightened régime of Theodoric, and plunging the country once more in darkness and barbarism.
There still remain for attention the Private Diptychs, which were given away to celebrate a marriage, or a happy recovery to health, or some other domestic reason. The subjects were usually mythological, and the compositions, sometimes of great beauty, were chiefly borrowed from Classical Art.
First, and by far the most beautiful, is the magnificent diptych of the noble families of the Nicomachi and the Symmachi; the two leaves are, respectively, in the Musée de Cluny at Paris and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The wonderful preservation of the surface shows the soft modelling of the ivory, and though the Paris leaf has been cruelly shattered and several pieces lost, the soft flow of the drapery is still sufficiently visible.