Plate 72

IVORIES

Doubtless owing to the beautiful texture, colour and adaptability for delicate carving, ivory has been in use from a remote period. Egypt, Assyria, and India have each contributed many beautiful examples of fine craftsmanship, indicative of the artistic culture of the centuries preceding the Christian Era.

In the Periclean age of Greece, ivory was used for the figure of Athene Parthenos by Pheidias, placed inside the Parthenon. This statue of the standing goddess, 40 ft. high, was of gold and ivory (called chryselephantine sculpture), the drapery being of beaten gold and the exposed parts of the figure of carefully-fitted pieces of ivory. A seated chryselephantine figure of Jupiter, about 58 ft. high, in the temple of Olympia, was also by Pheidias. Pausanias, the Roman traveller, enumerates some ten chryselephantine statues which he saw in his travels (A.D. 140).

The Roman period is noted for the many beautiful Consular diptychs, which may now be seen in our national museums. They consist of two ivory leaves usually 12 by 5 in., the inside having a slightly sunk plane covered with wax for writing upon, the outside being enriched with delicate carved reliefs (figs. 7, 8, and 9). These diptychs were given by new consuls on their appointment, to their friends and officers of the state. The consul is usually represented seated on the cushioned curule chair, or chair of state, and his name is generally written across the top of one leaf.

The Byzantines enriched the covers of their manuscripts with ivory, of which an illustration is given in fig. 6 ; the ivory throne of Maximian, Archbishop of Ravenna (A.D. 546-556), is also of this period. A beautiful treatment of ivory was used in the 13th and 14th centuries by the Saracens of Egypt; they frequently worked a fine geometric inlay of ivory upon ebony; in other examples ivory panels were pentagonal, hexagonal, or star-shaped, and carved with delicate arabesques, the framing of the panels being of cedar or ebony. In India ivory carving reached a high degree of perfection, especially in the many ivory combs, with pierced and relief work representing the figure of Buddha surrounded with foliage and richly caparisoned elephants.

In the Carlovingian period, 8th to 10th centuries, ivory was largely used for coffers or small chests. During the early Gothic period in Italy and France, ivory crucifixes, pastoral staffs, croziers, statuettes, and triptychs were made in large numbers; and the ivory combs and mirror cases of the Renascence period have fine reliefs of legendary or allegorical subjects. Of pictorial ivories the modern Japanese craftsmen show the highest technical skill, combined with a keen perception of nature and movement, yet their ivories lack the beauty and dignity of composition and the decorative treatment of the early and mediæval ivories.