Anthony Cutler

Carving, Recarving, and Forgery: Working Ivory in the Tenth and Twentieth Centuries

An understanding of the means by which a carved ivory statuette, box, or plaque comes into being is normally not considered integral to its aesthetic appreciation or the comprehension of its intellectual content. Yet for the productions of many cultures such larger knowledge can be shown to be of central importance. If the aim of our studies is the fullest possible awareness of an object’s achievement and effect, then both the nature of the material and the ways in which it was worked are essential parts of the equipment that retrospectively needs to be brought to bear on it. Such information not only can elucidate its origins and history, including its occasional reworking, but also can be instrumental in the identification of modern forgeries.

The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium

UK-based Contributors: Thomas S. Brown, Senior Lecturer in Medieval History, University of Edinburgh. Robert Browning, Professor Emeritus of Classics, University of London. David Buckton, Curator of Early Christian and Byzantine Collections, British Museum. Lawrence I. Conrad, Lecturer in Arab-Islamic Medicine, Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, London. Simon Franklin, Lecturer in Russian, University of Cambridge. Philip Grierson, Professor Emeritus of Numismatics, University of Cambridge. John Lowden, Lecturer in Art History, University of London. R. J. Macrides, Honorary Lecturer in Byzantine Studies and Modern Greek, University of St Andrews. Paul Magdalino, Lecturer in Medieval History, University of St Andrews. Cyril Mango, Bywater and Sotheby Professor of Byzantine and Modern Greek Language and Literature, University of Oxford. Marlia Mango, Art historian, Oxford. Sir Dimitri Obolensky, Professor Emeritus of Russian and Balkan History, University of Oxford. Nigel Wilson, Fellow and Tutor in Classics, University of Oxford.

Ivories, Inscriptions, and Episcopal Self-Consciousness in the Ottonian Empire: Berthold of Toul and the Berlin Hodegetria

This study advances two central claims based on a detailed investigation of the Byzantine ivory plaque depicting the Hodegetria now in the Museum für Spätantike und Byzantinische Kunst in Berlin (inv. no. 2394), which bears an elegant Latin poetic inscription carved upon its frame. First, it argues on the basis of historical, artistic, and epigraphic evidence that the hitherto unknown presul Bertoldus named in the inscription as the patron of the work can be identified as Bishop Berthold of Toul (996-1019), a prominent Lotharingian bishop under Henry II and a contemporary of the better known Ottonian bishops, Egbert of Trier and Bernward of Hildesheim. Second, in addition to the bold methods of episcopal use of eastern exotica, the study analyzes the cultural significance of the emergence around the year 1000 of the practice of incising inscriptions on ivories, often Byzantine works, that actually name a patron and commemorate an act of artistic patronage. The study argues that these inscriptions offer important evidence for the emergence of a new element in Ottonian episcopal self-identity: the self-conscious and public assertion by bishops of their roles as cultural impresarios and arbiters of taste.

A Byzantine Triptych in Medieval Germany and Its Modern Recovery

Two hitherto unknown ivory plaques can be shown to be the wings of a tenth-century Byzantine triptych, the centerpiece of which is a well known plaque showing Christ enthroned now set into the modern cover of an Ottonian lectionary in the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin. This reconstituted triptych is very closely related to the Romanos plaque in Paris, as well as to a number of other celebrated ivories, the dating of which has been a controverted topic for more than twenty years. In the light of an inventory of the cathedral of Minden drawn up in 1683, the newly discovered wings can be identified with plaques applied to the cover of an epistolary prepared at the order of Sigebert, bishop of Minden (1022-1036). On the same basis, the plaque with Christ enthroned is shown to have been mounted on the cover of a matching but now lost lectionary, rebound for the Royal Library in Berlin before 1828. The fact that the pair of service books and their bindings were made for an Ottonian bishop who died in 1036 indicates that the Romanos ivory in Paris, and pieces long accepted as its relatives, could not have been carved for the fourth emperor of that name (1068-1071) but must date from the time of Romanos II (959-963). Moreover, the careful dismemberment of the triptych and the intelligent application of its parts in Ottonian Germany point to a more sensitive use of Byzantine sacred art in the west than has traditionally been supposed.

An Imperial Byzantine Casket and its Fate at a Humanist's Hands

The ivory casket in the Palazzo Venezia, Rome, depicting an emperor and empress blessed by Christ and a selection of scenes from the life of David, is one of the few surviving major works from the period immediately after a centuries-long hiatus in Constantinopolitan ivory-carving. It has been given a wide variety of dates and places of origin, but it is identified here as a work made for the emperor Leo VI and assigned to 898 or 900, a little more than a decade after the “scepter tip” in Berlin, also supposedly made for the emperor. The circumstances under which the caskets inscriptions and figures were partially recarved have contributed not a little to misunderstanding of the original state of the object. This reworking, it is suggested, was undertaken in Rome, in the circle of the Jesuit savant, Athanasius Kircher.

A Recently Discovered Ivory Of St. Ignatios And The Lions

In this chapter, the author tries to show that an ivory is an authentic creation of the 10th or early 11th century depicting the martyrdom of St. Ignatios of Antioch. First, on the manner of production and the present state of the ivory. The ivorys focus on the moment of martyrdom could suggest that it once formed part of some such larger series of martyrdom; interest in the theme of the martyrs as a group is well documented in Byzantine period. Several features of the martyrdom of Ignatios are stressed in the literature about the saint in all periods. One is his mode of death, in the jaws of the lions; another is his joyful acceptance of his sentence and eagerness to proceed to martyrdom, and still another is his apostolic connection his succession to the see of Peter, and the analogies of his career with that of St. Paul. Keywords: Antioch; Byzantine period; Ivory; Lion; martyrdom; St. Ignatios

The Memory Palace of Constantine Porphyrogenitus

An investigation of the roles of late antique visual and literary exemplars in Byzantine court culture of the ninth and tenth centuries. Three modes of memory are detected: the appropriative, the interpretative, and the sequential. Each can be seen at work in the time of Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus, although this reign represents the culmination rather than the origin of the renovatio hitherto attributed to his sponsorship. Instead of personal patronage, a model couched in terms of cultural needs is proposed.

Apostolic Monasticism at Tokalı Kilise in Cappadocia

At least as early as the day, nearly eighty years ago, when Hans Rott gained access to “Doghalikilise” through an entrance reduced to a narrow cleft by heaps of rubble and alluvial soil, the monument has been recognized as the largest and most important in Goreme. Many of the wall-paintings of both the Old and the New Church at Tokali were published by Jerphanion who correctly appreciated the relative chronology of these successive phases. This pioneering and still fundamental survey was supplemented by the excellent photographs of Jeannine Le Brun in Restles corpus of 1967. In the same year, Cormack suggested on stylistic and iconographic grounds a probable date of ca. 913–920 for the decoration of the Old Church, a period little less than half a century before its relatively gigantic successor was cut transversely across its eastern end. Now, within a year or two, Tokali Kilise will receive the ultimate accolade of monographic treatment by Ann Wharton Epstein in a book which treats the church as a cultural whole and finally recognizes the frescoes in the New Church as the supreme achievement of Byzantine wall-painting to survive from the tenth century.

Samothracian Reflections. Aspects of the Revival of the Antique

These three essays were inspired by the Samothracian discoveries. Cyriacus of Anconas visit to the island and his assessment of what he saw are the subject of the opening essay. This is followed by the first detailed and comprehensive analysis of Mantegnas Parnassus, a painting which Mrs. Lehmann suggests reflects in its theme and imagery the use of a limited number of ancient sculptures and texts. The final essay is a discussion of the postclassical transformation of the iconographic type of the ancient ship-fountain.