Transcriber's Notes:
Underscores "_" before and after a word or phrase indicate _italics_
in the original text.
Equal signs "=" before and after a word or phrase indicate =bold=
in the original text.
Carat symbol "^" designates a superscript.
Small capitals have been converted to SOLID capitals.
Illustrations have been moved so they do not break up paragraphs.
Antiquated spellings have been preserved.
Typographical errors have been silently corrected but other variations
in spelling and punctuation remain unaltered.
The "LIST OF FULL PAGE PLATES" was added by the transcriber it is not
part of the original text.
SOUTH KENSINGTON MUSEUM ART HANDBOOKS.
EDITED BY WILLIAM MASKELL.
N^{o.} 2.—IVORIES ANCIENT AND MEDIÆVAL.
_These Handbooks are reprints of the dissertations prefixed to the
large catalogues of the chief divisions of works of art in the Museum
at South Kensington; arranged and so far abridged as to bring each into
a portable shape. The Lords of the Committee of Council on Education
having determined on the publication of them, the editor trusts that
they will meet the purpose intended; namely, to be useful, not alone
for the collections at South Kensington, but for other collectors by
enabling the public at a trifling cost to understand something of the
history and character of the subjects treated of._
_The authorities referred to in each book are given in the large
catalogues; where will also be found detailed descriptions of the very
numerous examples in the South Kensington Museum._
W. M.
_August, 1875._
[Illustration: PASTORAL STAFF CARVED IVORY WITH FIGURES, COMPOSING
TOGETHER A REPRESENTATION OF THE NATIVITY. GERMAN 12^{TH} CENT^Y S. K.
M. (N^o. 218-65.)
A. A. BRADBURY. FECIT.]
IVORIES
ANCIENT AND MEDIÆVAL.
BY
WILLIAM MASKELL.
WITH NUMEROUS WOODCUTS.
[Illustration]
_Published for the Committee of Council on Education_
BY
CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY.
_FIFTY COPIES ON LARGE PAPER, WITH ADDITIONAL
ILLUSTRATIONS._
LIST OF FULL PAGE PLATES
FOLLOWING
PAGE
PASTORAL STAFF CARVED IVORY WITH FIGURES. Frontispiece
IVORY CARVING. ONE LEAF OF THE DIPTYCHON MELERETENSE. 34
IVORY CARVING. CIRCULAR MIRROR COVER. DATE 1300-1330. 74
IVORY CARVING, HEAD OF A TAU OR T SHAPED STAFF, IN WALRUS
TUSK, THE COMPARTMENTS CONTAINING THE SIGNS OF THE ZODIAC. 85
CROSIER IN CARVED IVORY AND GILT METAL. 86
TRIPTYCH, SERVING AS A RELIQUARY IN CARVED IVORY ABOUT 1480. 96
HORN OR OLIPHANT. IVORY. BYZANTINE. 11^{TH} CENT. 114
PLAQUES OR PANELS OF A CASKET, ONE A FRAGMENT, IVORY, FRENCH. 116
CARVED IVORY BOX, WITH ARABIC INSCRIPTION. HISPANO-MORESCO. 118
LIST OF WOODCUTS.
PAGE
Prehistoric carving 9
Esquimaux carving 9
Prehistoric carving in relief 10
” ” in outline 11
” ” of the Mammoth 11
Angel; end of fourth century 36
Vase; end of sixth century 46
Book cover; Carlovingian 49
Panel of an English casket; eighth century 53
Another panel of the same 54
St. Peter’s chair 56
Spanish Moresque panel 57
Coffer painted with medallions 59
Open-work; two small panels 64
Italian marriage coffer 64
Part of a Predella, in bone 66
Cover of a box, with Morris Dancers 68
English comb; eleventh century 70
Italian comb; sixteenth century 71
Mirror case; fourteenth century 74
Another ” ” 75
Chessman; twelfth century 80
” thirteenth century 81
Arm of a chair; eleventh century 82
Two groups of chessmen, found in the island of Lewis 83
The volute of a pastoral staff; thirteenth century 87
” ” ” English; twelfth century 90
One leaf of a diptych in very high relief;
fourteenth century 100
Group, a Pietà; late fourteenth century 103
Painter at work on a statuette 105
Chaplet and beads; and girdle, with ivory clasps 112
Horn; fifteenth century 113
Two panels in open-work; fourteenth century 115
Panel in minute open-work 115
Leaf of diptych, executed for bishop Grandison;
fourteenth century 117
IVORIES ANCIENT AND MEDIÆVAL.
CHAPTER I.
Every description or account of Carvings in Ivory ought to include
similar carvings in bone, of which last many remarkable examples are
to be found in the South Kensington and other museums. The rarity and
value of ivory frequently obliged workmen to use the commoner and less
costly material.
In the strictest sense, no substance except the tusk of the elephant
presents the characteristic of true ivory, which, “now, according
to the best anatomists and physiologists, is restricted to that
modification of dentine or tooth substance which, in transverse
sections or fractures, shows lines of different colours or striæ
proceeding in the arc of a circle, and forming by their decussations
minute curvilinear lozenge-shaped spaces.” Upon this subject the reader
should consult a valuable paper, read by professor Owen, before the
Society of Arts, in 1856, and printed in their journal.
But, besides the elephant, other animals furnish what may also be
not improperly called ivory. Such as the walrus, the narwhal, and
the hippopotamus. The employment of walrus ivory has ceased among
southern European nations for a long time; and carvings in the tusks of
that animal are chiefly to be found among remains of the mediæval and
Carlovingian periods. In those ages it was largely used by nations of
Scandinavian origin and in England and Germany. The people of the north
were then unable to obtain and may not even have heard of the existence
of true elephant ivory. In quality and beauty of appearance walrus
ivory scarcely yields to that of the elephant.
Sir Frederick Madden tells us, in a communication published in the
Archæologia, that “in the reign of Alfred, about A.D. 890, Ohtere, the
Norwegian, visited England, and gave an account to the king of his
voyage in pursuit of these animals, chiefly on account of their teeth.
The author of the _Kongs-Skugg-sio_, or Speculum Regale (composed in
the 12th century), takes particular notice of the walrus and of its
teeth. Olaus Magnus, in the 15th century, tells us that sword-handles
were made from them; and, somewhat later, Olaus Wormius writes, ‘the
Icelanders are accustomed, during the long nights of winter, to cut out
various articles from these teeth. This is more particularly the case
in regard to chessmen.’” Olaus Wormius speaks in another place of rings
against the cramp, handles of swords, javelins, and knives.
There is still another kind of real ivory—the fossil ivory—which is
now extensively used in many countries, although it may be difficult
to decide whether it was known to the ancients or to mediæval carvers.
In prehistoric ages a true elephant, says professor Owen, “roamed in
countless herds over the temperate and northern parts of Europe, Asia,
and America.” This was the mammoth, the extinct _Elephas primigenius_.
The tusks of these animals are found in great quantities in the frozen
soil of Siberia, along the banks of the larger rivers. Almost the whole
of the ivory turner’s work in Russia is from Siberian fossil ivory,
and the story of the entire mammoth discovered about half a century
ago embedded in ice is well known to every one. Although commonly
called _fossil_, this ivory has not undergone the change usually
understood in connection with the term fossil, for their substance is
as well adapted for use as the ivory procured from living species.
With regard to the tusks of elephants, African and Asiatic ivory must
be distinguished. The first, “when recently cut, is of a mellow, warm,
transparent tint, with scarcely any appearance of grain, in which
state it is called _transparent_ or _green_ ivory; but, as the oil
dries up by exposure to the air, it becomes lighter in colour. Asiatic
ivory, when newly cut, appears more like the African, which has been
long exposed to the air, and tends to become yellow by exposure. The
African variety has usually a closer texture, works harder, and takes a
better polish than the Asiatic.” It would be mere guessing to attempt
to decide the original nature of ancient or mediæval ivories. Time has
equally hardened and changed the colour of both kinds, whether African
or Asiatic.
We cannot easily suggest any way in which the very large slabs or
plaques of ivory used by the early and mediæval artists were obtained.
The leaves of a diptych of the seventh century, in the public library
at Paris, are fifteen inches in length by nearly six inches wide. In
the British museum is a single piece which measures in length sixteen
inches and a quarter by more than five inches and a half in width,
and in depth more than half an inch. By some it is thought that the
ancients knew a method, which has been lost, of bending, softening,
and flattening solid pieces of ivory; others suppose that they were
then able to procure larger tusks than can be got from the degenerate
animal of our own day. Mr. McCulloch, in his dictionary of commerce,
tells us that 60 lbs. is the average weight of an elephant’s tusk; but
Holtzapffel, a practical authority, declares this to be far too high,
and that 15 or 16 lbs. would be nearer the average. Be this as it may,
pieces of the size above mentioned (and larger specimens probably
exist) could not be cut from the biggest of the tusks preserved in
the South Kensington museum; although it weighs 90 lbs., is eight feet
eleven inches long, and sixteen inches and a half in circumference at
the centre. This tusk is the largest of five which were presented to
the Queen by the king of Shoa about the year 1856, and given by Her
Majesty to the museum. The other four weigh, respectively, 76 lbs.,
86 lbs., 72 lbs., and 52 lbs. They are all, probably, male tusks. An
enormous pair of tusks, weighing together 325 lbs., was shown in the
Great Exhibition of 1851; but these, heavy as they were, measured only
eight feet six inches in length, and did not exceed twenty-two inches
in circumference at the base.
An ingenious mode of explaining how the great chryselephantine statues
of Phidias and other Greek sculptors were made, is proposed and
fully explained in detail by Quatremère De Quincy in his work on the
art of antique sculpture. He gives several plates in illustration,
more particularly Plate XXIX.; but none of them meet the difficulty
of the large flat plaques. The natural form of a tusk would adapt
itself easily, so far as regards the application of pieces of very
considerable size, to the round parts of the human figure.
Mr. Hendrie, in his notes to the third book of the “Schedula diversarum
artium” of Theophilus, says that the ancients had a method of softening
and bending ivory by immersion in different solutions of salts in
acid. “Eraclius has a chapter on this. Take sulphate of potass, fossil
salt, and vitriol; these are ground with very sharp vinegar in a brass
mortar. Into this mixture the ivory is placed for three days and
nights. This being done, you will hollow out a piece of wood as you
please. The ivory being thus placed in the hollow you direct it, and
will bend it to your will.” The same writer gives another recipe from
the Sloane manuscript (of 15th century), no. 416. This directs that the
ingredients above mentioned “are to be distilled in equal parts, which
would yield muriatic acid, with the presence of water. Infused in this
water half a day, ivory can be made so soft that it can be cut like
wax. And when you wish it hardened, place it in white vinegar and it
becomes hard.”
Sir Digby Wyatt, in a lecture read before the Arundel society, quotes
these methods from Mr. Hendrie and adds another from an English
manuscript of the 12th century: “Place the ivory in the following
mixture. Take two parts of quick lime, one part of pounded tile, one
part of oil, and one part of torn tow. Mix up all these with a lye made
of elm bark.” These various recipes have been tried in modern days, and
the experiments, hitherto, have completely failed.
Considerable variety of colour will be observed in the various pieces
of any large collection, and much difference in the condition of
them. Some, far from being the most ancient, are greatly discoloured
and brittle in appearance; others retain their colour almost in its
original purity and their perfect firmness of texture, seemingly
unaffected by the long lapse of time. The innumerable possible
accidents to which carved ivories may have been exposed from age to
age will account for this great difference, and a happy forgetfulness,
perhaps owing to a contemptuous neglect at first of their value and
importance, may have been the cause of the comparatively excellent
state and condition of many. Laid aside in treasuries of churches and
monasteries, or put away in the chests and cupboards of great houses,
the memory even of their existence may have passed away for century
after century.
It does not appear that any good method is known by which a discoloured
ivory can be bleached. All rough usage of course merely injures the
piece itself, and removes the external surface. Exposure to the light
keeps the original whiteness longer, and in a few instances may to some
extent restore it. It need hardly be observed that any other attempt to
alter the existing condition, whatever it may be, as regards the colour
of an antique or mediæval ivory is to be condemned.
It is quite a different matter to endeavour to preserve works in ivory
which have suffered partial decomposition, and which can be kept from
utter destruction only by some kind of artificial treatment. Almost
all the fragments sent to England by Mr. Layard from Nineveh were in
this state of extreme fragility and decay. Professor Owen suggested
that they should be boiled in a solution of gelatine. The experiment
was tried and found to be sufficiently effectual; and it is to be hoped
that the present success will prove to be lasting. “Since the fragments
have been in England,” says Mr. Layard, “they have been admirably
restored and cleaned. The glutinous matter, by which the particles
forming the ivory are kept together, had, from the decay of centuries,
been completely exhausted. By an ingenious process it has been
restored, and the ornaments, which on their discovery fell to pieces
almost upon mere exposure to the air, have regained the appearance and
consistency of recent ivory, and may be handled without risk of injury.”
We may think it to be sufficiently strange in tracing the early
history of the art of carving or engraving in ivory, that we should
be able easily to carry it, upon the evidence of extant examples, to
an antiquity long before the Christian era: through the Roman, Greek,
Assyrian, and Jewish people, up to an age anterior to the origin of
those nations by centuries, the number of which it may be difficult
accurately to count. These very ancient examples are of the earliest
Egyptian dynasties: yet, between them and the date of the earliest now
known specimens of works of art incised or carved in ivory there is a
lapse of time so great that it may probably be numbered by thousands of
years.
We must go back to prehistoric man for the proof of this; to a
period earlier than the age of iron or of bronze; to the first—the
drift—period of the stone age. We must go back, as Sir John Lubbock
writes, “to a time so remote that the reindeer was abundant in the
south of France, and probably even the mammoth had not entirely
disappeared.” Lartet and Christy also (in their valuable publication,
the Reliquiæ Aquitanicæ) make a like remark: “It rests with the
geologist, by indicating the changes which have occurred in the very
land itself, to shadow out the period in the dim distance of that far
antiquity when these implements, the undoubted work of human hands,
were used and left there by primæval man.”
Within the last few years, in caves at Le Moustier and at La Madelaine
in the Dordogne, numerous fragments have been found of tusks of the
mammoth and of reindeer’s bone and horn, on some of which are incised
drawings of various animals, and upon others similar representations
carved in low relief. These objects have been engraved in several
works by geologists and writers upon the important questions relating
to prehistoric people; and copies of them may be found in Sir John
Lubbock’s book, “The origin of Civilization,” already quoted from.
Among them are drawings and carvings of fish, of a snake, of an ibex,
of a man carrying a spear, of a mammoth, of horses’ heads, and of a
group of reindeer.
Sir John Lubbock describes these works as showing “really considerable
skill;” as “being very fair drawings;” as the productions of men to
whom we must give “full credit for their love of art, such as it was.”
But to speak of them in words so cold is less than justice. No one can
examine the few fragments which as yet have been discovered without
acknowledging their merit, and attributing them to what may very truly
be called the hand of an artist. There can be no mistake for a moment
as to many of the beasts which are represented.
Again: the sculptor has given us, in a spirited and natural manner,
more than one characteristic quality of his subject: and we can
recognise the heaviness and sluggishness of the mammoth as easily as
the grace and activity of the reindeer. The results of the workman’s
labour are not like the elephants and camels and lions of a child’s
Noah’s ark—merely bodies with heads and four legs—but they are executed
with the right feeling and in an artistic spirit: the animals are
carefully drawn, and often with much vigour. There is nothing
conventional about them; they are far beyond and utterly different in
style from the ugly attempts of really civilised people, such as the
Peruvians or Mexicans, to say nothing of the works of the savages of
Africa or New Zealand. They are true to nature.
The aboriginal nations of North and South America must certainly be
spoken of as civilised, though it is curious to remember how great
authorities seem to differ as to what civilisation means. Macaulay, in
his Life of lord Clive, writing with a recklessness of statement not
unusual with him when aiming at some picturesque contrast, describes
the ancient Mexicans as “savages who had no letters, who were ignorant
of the use of metals, who had not broken in a single animal to labour,
and who wielded no better weapons than those which could be made out
of sticks, flints, and fishbones, and who regarded a horse-soldier
as a monster.” But Bernal Diaz, whose report as an eye-witness has
stood the test of years of later investigation and dispute, describes
the appearance of the great cities from without as like the enchanted
castles of romance, and full of great towers and temples. And within,
“every kind of eatable, every form of dress, medicines, perfumes,
unguents, furniture, lead, copper, gold, and silver ornaments wrought
in the form of fruit, adorned the porticoes and allured the passer-by.
Paper, that great material of civilisation, was to be obtained in this
wonderful emporium; also every kind of earthenware, cotton of all
colours in skeins, &c. There were officers who went continually about
the market-place, watching what was sold, and the measures which were
used.”
If we are to take the judgment of Lord Macaulay as our guide in
determining what may be true civilisation, we must set down the
Greeks in the reign of Alexander, or the Italians in the days of Leo
the tenth, as “savages,” because they were ignorant of the electric
telegraph; or ourselves now, because we cannot guide balloons through
the air.
The sculptures and works of art in the ruined cities of Yucatan are
also to be thought of. Many engravings of them are given in Stephens’s
central America.
Nor is it enough to say that the prehistoric carvings are merely true
to nature. Their merit is clearly seen when compared with the plates of
Indian drawings and picture writings in Schoolcraft’s history of the
Indian tribes of the United States: or again, of a different character
altogether, the illuminations in Indian and Persian manuscripts.
In some respects these last are of the highest quality as regards
execution, but the animals are generally drawn in a manner purely
conventional, with scant feeling of truth or beauty, and little power
of expressing it.
[Illustration]
In short, the prehistoric carvings are from the hands of men who were
neither beginners nor blunderers in their art. The practised skill of
a modern wood engraver would scarcely exceed in firmness and decision,
nor in evident rapidity of execution, the outline of the animals in the
example which is here engraved.
[Illustration]
Other illustrations are given in order that the reader may compare
them, and more especially those also just referred to above, with a
woodcut (on preceding page) of drawings incised upon bone by Esquimaux
of our own days. This has been chosen because there seems to be a
general disposition, in the way of theory, to compare the dwellers in
the caves of Dordogne and the men of the stone age with the Esquimaux,
and to limit, as it were, the unknown amount of civilisation in the one
by what we have learnt from our own experience of the latter. Yet, so
far as the drawings and the sculptures are concerned, there is scarcely
room for comparison. The work of the stone age is that of a people with
whom, if they were in all other respects savages, we have no modern
parallel. The work of the Esquimaux is that of men who imitate with the
hand of a child, and the success or power of whose imitation ranges
exactly with their advance and culture (if culture it may be called) in
other arts.
[Illustration]
The first of these illustrations is perhaps the best, as it is
certainly the most delicate and graceful of all the fragments yet
discovered. It represents the profile of the head and shoulder of an
ibex, carved in low relief upon a piece of the palm of a reindeer’s
antler. So exact and well characterised is the sculpture, that
naturalists have no hesitation in deciding the animal to be an ibex of
the Alps, and not of the Pyrenees.
The next is a group of reindeer drawn upon a piece of slate.
And lower down the page, incised upon a piece of mammoth ivory, are
outlines of the mammoth itself. The original, rather more than nine
inches in length, is at Paris in the museum of the Jardin des plantes.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
There is no discovery with respect to primæval man—his powers and
capabilities, his possible enjoyments and appreciation of the
beautiful, his certain infinite elevation as a reasonable being above
the beasts of the field, in the most distant age and period to which
his existence has been traced,—so full of interest, so full as yet of
unfathomed mystery, as these wonderful works in ivory and bone. It can
scarcely be supposed that, by a happy accident, we have lighted on the
only specimens which were ever executed of such great merit; or that
there were some two or three men only who for a brief time in the stone
age, by a sort of miracle, were able to produce work so excellent.
Further researches and a few more fortunate “finds” may enable us to
learn much more than we now know of other habits, and the state of
(what we call) the barbarism of those ancient races in other respects.
Nor must we forget that for numberless generations after these men had
passed away their descendants lost all the old power and skill. “Dark
ages” came, similar (although incomparably longer in duration) to those
which followed Greek or Roman civilisation and science from the sixth
to the ninth and tenth centuries after Christ. Again quoting Sir John
Lubbock, we know that “no representation, however rude, of any animal
has yet been found in any of the Danish shell mounds. Even on objects
of the bronze age they are so rare that it is doubtful whether a single
well-authenticated instance could be produced.” “Even curved lines”
upon the rude and coarse pieces of pottery of later ages “are rare.”
Once more: “Very few indeed of the British sepulchral urns, belonging
to ante-Roman times, have upon them any curved lines. Representations
of animals are also almost entirely wanting.”
Further discussion and speculation upon this subject would here be out
of place. We must leave it, although with great regret. We must pass at
one bound to a later period of time which, however long ago it may seem
to us looking back upon it, is nevertheless, in comparison with the
supposed date of the men who left their ivory and bone carvings in the
caves of Aquitaine, positively modern.