Upon the obverse side are pairs of quadrupeds, birds, and serpents, among a maze of foliage, together with the eagle, lion, lamb, and ox, as symbols of the evangelists. The lion and the ox have wings, and at the foot of the cross is an angel.

The carving of the Saviour's form is clearly inferior to that of the decoration which surrounds it. Amador de los Ríos seeks to account for this by declaring that “the difficulty from the point of view of art increases in proportion as the size of the figure is required to be larger”—a statement with which I wholly disagree. I believe, in fact, that in this cross the figure of Christ and the surrounding ornamentation are not by the same hand, and that the carver of the decorative detail was simply the better craftsman of the two.

Many of the statuettes of the Virgin which are preserved in Spain were probably made in France. One that is typically and unquestionably Spanish is the celebrated “Virgin of Battles” (Plate [xliii].), now guarded, together with other relics of Saint Ferdinand (see Vol. I., Plate [xi]xi.), in the Chapel Royal of Seville cathedral. These statuettes, the use of which originated with the Greek emperors, and which were called by the Byzantines socia belli, consist of a seated figure of the Virgin with a small door opening underneath her throne, and served as reliquaries, and also as a kind of talisman. Boutelou says that the Spanish warriors of the Middle Ages were accustomed to carry these images to war with them, fitted upon a pin protruding from the left side of the saddle-bow. The “Virgin of Battles,” made in Spain in the early part of the thirteenth century, was thus carried by King Ferdinand the Saint, resting between his shield or rodela and his left arm, and so protected, and protecting, in the brunt of war.

XLIV
SPANISH MEDIÆVAL BACULUS

The image is of ivory, and measures seventeen inches in height. The style is primitive Gothic, not as yet emancipated from Romanic and Byzantine art; and the expression of the Madonna and her Babe is marked by an engaging sweetness. Through lapse of centuries, myriads of diminutive cracks have opened on the surface of the ivory, and this has turned, in colour, to a brightish yellow. The right arm of the Virgin was broken off at some time prior to the sixteenth century, and has been replaced by another one. Mother and Child wear crowns of silver-gilt which probably were added later, and the hair, lips, and eyes have been badly painted or repainted with discordant colouring. A four-sided hole bored deep into the ivory served for holding the image to the perno which projected from the monarch's saddle-bow.

A few elaborate baculi or pastoral staves (Plate [xliv].) exist in Spain, including one of the fourteenth century, in ivory, which belonged to the late Marquis of Monistrol, and is carved with the Crucifixion and also with the Virgin contemplating the Holy Infant as He is offered cups by angels. Another interesting Spanish baculus, though not of ivory, but copper decorated with turquoises and bright blue enamel, belonged to Bishop Pelayo de Cebeyra of Mondoñedo (a.d. 1199–1218), and has been preserved, together with that prelate's gilded shoes. In the celebrated processions of Santiago, at which Alfonso the Sixth was personally present, magnificent ivory baculi were borne, not only by the archbishop (eburnea virga pontificali decoratus), but even by the choristers.

Between the eleventh and the fifteenth centuries, Spanish craftsmen produced a fair quantity of ivory boxes, reliquaries, diptyches, triptyches, combs, and other less important objects. A fifteenth-century ivory spoon, ten inches long, whose handle is carved with six crocodiles, is in the National Museum, and may be Spanish work. In the same collection are one or two ivory diptyches and leaves of diptyches, and a wooden box (fourteenth century), with figures of carved ivory representing passages from the life of Saint George upon the body of the box, and from the Old Testament upon the lid. A carved Renaissance temple of the same material, with the Virgin and Child in its interior, is probably Italian.