Ivories Ancient and Mediæval

by William Maskell

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.