The casket has a frieze of fifteen heads in medallions, and in the narrow borders are the symbolical Types of Old Testament history. The large central scenes are from the New Testament, showing Christ as the Good Shepherd at the Gate of the Fold, and several of the miracles which became so popular on the Italo-Byzantine ivories, including the rarer scene of the Raising of Jairus’s daughter, which has many features in common with the Raising of Tabitha on one of a series of three most interesting little plaques in the British Museum, notably in the treatment of the long waving hair of the attendant women. On the flat lid the Cycle of the Passion is most fully illustrated, but stops short with the scene in the Prætorium before the sad representation of the Crucifixion.
The great similarity between the art of the Eastern and Western divisions of the Roman Empire has already been mentioned, and it is this similarity which causes considerable difficulty in classifying the early ivories. The three British Museum plaques just referred to as having a close connection in the scene of the Raising of Tabitha to the Brescia casket, which is undoubtedly of Western origin, have also a strong resemblance to the first half of a diptych now in the Trivulzio Collection at Milan, both in the dress of the soldiers, and in the crouching figure of one of the Holy Women, which are almost identical on the two ivories. Molinier considers the Trivulzio tablet to be purely Constantinopolitan, but Graeven produces good evidence for connecting it with Latin sculpture.
This tablet is divided into two scenes from the first Easter Morn, the startled soldiers by the tomb of Christ, and the Angel appearing to the two Maries. The proportions are on the whole good, though inclining to the dumpiness peculiar to the reliefs on the sarcophagi. There are other details which betray the influence of these sculptures. The half opened door of the tomb is found on pagan coffins, and the dress of the soldiers, with the strange round headgear, rather like a cook’s cap, is often characteristic of the Jews, and is found on several of the sarcophagi. In the British Museum plaques the Israelites who stoop down to drink of the water from the rock wear exactly the same dress, treated in exactly the same manner, even to the ends of the chlamys, which fly out in rapid movement.
This dress is also found in a Codex (No. 286) at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and again on another set of plaques in the British Museum, which belonged to a casket, and are of a deep reddish colour. On these plaques the types of the Holy Women are the same as those on the Trivulzio tablet, and the crouching women in the Raising of Tabitha in the British Museum set of three. The Crucifixion ([Fig. 7]) belongs to the coloured set, and is the earliest representation known, excepting that on the carved wood doors of St. Sabina at Rome, which were made by Greek workmen for Pope Celestin (432-440), and the two conceptions have much in common in modelling and pose.
It should be noticed that the titulus is written only in Latin. A most important proof of the Latin origin of these ivories is the finely cut honeysuckle moulding which surrounds the door of the tomb in the Trivulzio tablet, and which is found both on the diptych of Probianus ([Fig. 2]) and on that of the Nicomachi family (No. 58). The tablet has another close connection with the Probianus diptych in the division of the surface into two tiers by the border, and the recognition of the existence of three dimensional space, by grouping the figures firmly on the ground. This knowledge was soon forgotten, and the figures on sculptures of scarcely later date float about one over the other without the artist being in the least troubled by the problem of the depth of inclosed space. The close connection with these diptychs points to an early date, probably not later than the first decades of the fifth century. The dividing border[9] is very common in Carlovingian ivories, and is, perhaps, one reason why Westwood and Stuhlfauth attribute the Trivulzio plaque to that epoch, but a comparison of the “space” arrangement, imperfect as it is, with any Carlovingian ivory, clearly shows the superiority of the more ancient work.
DR. GRAEVEN PHOTO.][BRITISH MUSEUM
7. THE CRUCIFIXION
Italian, commencement of fifth century