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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 January 2012
The little ivory figure which our Fellow Captain Acland, curator of the Dorset County Museum at Dorchester, has been kind enough to allow me to show here this evening is certainly of very remarkable beauty and interest (pl. XXIX, 1). It has not hitherto been published or described in any way. In its present state it measures just over five and an eighth inches in height (thirteen centimetres), and the missing feet would I suppose have brought it up to about six inches. It is carved in morse ivory (walrus-tooth) which has acquired an exquisite greyish-brown patina giving it something of the appearance of onyx. There is a rather serious split running all round the edge. The surface, except in the few places where it has been worn away, is highly polished and has been worked with the utmost delicacy, particularly noticeable in the hair, in the elaborately folded drapery over the right thigh and knee, and in the uncovered right hand. The face has been slightly rubbed, but the left side is still in the main well preserved, and has a curious flavour of archaic Greek sculpture about it. The eyes are drilled out, evidently for the insertion of small beads of jet or black glass.
page 210 note 1 Instances are to be seen in the great ivory cross at Copenhagen, made for Gunhild, the niece of Cnut, shortly before her death in 1076 (G. iii, 124), and in two rather later ivories of Germanic origin at Würzburg (G. ii, 148) and Strasburg (G. ii, 169). There are two English, or probably English, examples in the Victoria and Albert Museum, a tau-cross (215–1865) in which not only the eyes but details of the ornament are inlaid with tiny black beads, and a recently purchased relief of the Crucifixion (A 80–1923) with one eye, apparently of jet, still in place. There are more or less contemporary Spanish examples in the eleventh-twelfth century casket of San Isidore at Leon (Kingsley Porter, Romanesque Sculpture, pl. 651), and on a relief at Berlin (Volbach, Catalogue, no. 3008).
For the full twelfth century we have a conspicuous but rather enigmatic instance in the covers of the Psalter of Melisenda at the British Museum (Dalton, Catalogue, nos. 28, 29), perhaps made at the Angevin Court at Jerusalem, c. 1130–40. The British Museum has also a draughtsman (Ib., no. 168; G. iii, 200) with inlaid ornament, and a seated figure of a King (Ib., no. 615) with eyes of black glass, which Mr. Dalton has classed as Rhenish; it reminds me of similar figures at St. Omer and Lille, and might, I think, perhaps be French. There is a book-cover with inlaid eyes (G. iii, 59) in the Rylands Library at Manchester which Dr. Goldschmidt has located at Trèves in the second half of the twelfth century. No doubt there are a number of others, and it would be easy to cite many ivories with drilled eyes which may once have been inlaid. But as during the late eleventh and twelfth centuries examples are to be found in many countries of Western Europe, the fact that the eyes of the Dorchester figure were almost certainly treated in this way gives no help in localizing it.
page 211 note 1 Goldschmidt, , Elfenbeinskulpturen, iii, 2; no. 145–1866.Google Scholar
page 212 note 1 A fairly close parallel for costume is afforded by the Bertolt (second half of the eleventh century) Gospel-book at Salzburg (fig. 119); English examples occur in the Aethelwold Benedictional (fig. 134), in the St. Albans Psalter at Hildesheim (fig. 137), and elsewhere.
page 212 note 2 I am indebted for all this information, as well as for much else, to Captain Acland. Since this paper was read, a folio album of Dorset antiquities made by Mr. Warne has been presented to the Museum; this includes a sketch of the ivory with Mr. Hall's name written below it.
page 213 note 1 Exhibited at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1913, no. 76; illustrated on pl. xxiv of the Catalogue of that Exhibition.
page 213 note 2 The figures in the Copenhagen group are difficult to explain. Dr. Goldschmidt tentatively interprets them as a Scribe and a High-priest. The foremost is not unlike the conventional Christ, the second has a strong look of St. Paul, but is wearing episcopal dress, alb, stole, dalmatic, and chasuble.
page 214 note 1 Mâle, M., in L'Art Religieux du XIIme Siècle, p. 146, n. 2Google Scholar, has dated it after 1161, but the name of St. Edward the Confessor, canonized in that year, does not in fact occur either in the Calendar or in the Litany; the terminus ad quem is given by the absence of St. Thomas of Canterbury.
page 214 note 2 Closely similar crowns, with trefoil ornaments rising from a plain or ornamented band, are to be seen in many other English manuscripts from the beginning of the eleventh to the end of the twelfth century. Compare the crowns worn by King Cnut in the Register of New Minster (1016–20) at the British Museum; by David in the big Durham Bible of c. 1090 (Phot. V. and A. M., 49613); by Antiochus and by Cyrus in the Winchester Bible of c. 1154–89 (Phot. V. and A. M., 17292, 49751)
page 214 note 3 The miniature of the Virgin and Child is reproduced in colour in Sir George Warner's Illuminated MSS. in the British Museum (1903), pl. 13; there is a reduced illustration of the Three Marys in Schools of Illumination, Part II (1915), pl. 1; the Dispatch of the Archangel has not been photographed or illustrated before.