A most interesting series of square plaques belong to the second half of the century, and are much the same type as the Trivulzio tablet; the figures are positively grotesque, with their peculiar cap-like hair, staring eyes, heavy features, and large unmodelled forms, yet there is such a sincere reverence and solemn earnestness about them, that the attention is forcibly arrested.
The Darmstadt plaque represents Christ healing the Demoniac, who is held, whilst the evil spirit struggles forth from his lips. The British Museum possesses an equally well-carved plaque with the Raising of the Widow’s Son at Nain, the vertical folds are finely fluted, and the features, though peculiar, are in no way coarse. The background of this plaque like one in the Berlin Museum, and another at Liverpool, is covered with a diaper of cruciform perforations, like those on St. Patrick’s Bell and other early Irish antiquities. Christ is youthful and beardless on the Berlin plaque, which represents Mary and Joseph finding Him in the Temple. The technique in this and the remaining plaques at Liverpool is slightly coarser, but the style in all is identical. Christ alone is nimbed, and in each the figures have heavy masses of hair drawn back half over the ears, and strange solid robes, with the folded edge of the transverse drapery passing just below the knee.
Another very exceptional series, which must be the work of some Rhenish master at the end of the century, is intensely forcible in style; but the artist is already preoccupied with the technical effects of which he shows himself such a master. The cover of the Echternach codex, which is said to have belonged to the Empress Theophano, bears in the centre an ivory plaque representing Christ on the Cross, with Longinus and Stephaton. These bizarre figures seem to presage the whole future of German art, the love of descriptive figures, that evil should appear evil, and earthly things should have no heavenly aspect. Perhaps they carried their love of naturalism to extremes, and as heavenly things were few and far between, they also gained a strong earthly taint.
The Crucifixion on a binding in the John Rylands Library at Manchester ([Fig. 25]) is evidently by the same artist. The grouping is purely Byzantine, but the severance of feeling is as far as the East is from the West. The gesture of the beloved disciple as he clasps his hands to control his passionate emotion, is worth all the stereotyped poses of Byzantine art, and one forgets the crudity of the whole thing in wonder at the emotion pent up in those rugged forms.
The clumsy features and moustache divided into two solid pieces, with the forceful attitudes and the peculiar drapery edged with an embroidered hem, are found again on several other carvings,[21] notably an aged figure of St. Paul in the Musée de Cluny. The bald head, wrinkled forehead, and the fulness of the drooping lids, are portrayed with wonderful realism in a wide and rough technique, the very reverse of the caressing finish of the contemporary Byzantine artist.
This contrast of German and Byzantine art on a book belonging to the Empress, raises the question of how much of the Byzantine influence was attributable to Theophano, grandchild of the artistic Constantine Porphrygenitus, and sister of the Emperors Basil and Constantine.
After long hesitation on the part of the proud Byzantine Court, the German offer was accepted and Theophano, the delicately nurtured Porphrygenite, was married to that little boy we see kneeling by his mother’s side on the Trivulzio tablet, and set forth on a journey to the savage wilds of Germany. Otto II. grew up to be an heroic dreamer, and on his early death, during one of his campaigns in Italy, the youthful Theophano claimed to be regent, and had a hard struggle for the rights of her young son, Otto III.
[JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY, MANCHESTER
25. CRUCIFIXION
German, tenth century