Late Antique and Byzantine Ivory Carving

Variorum
Anthony Cutler
ISBN: 0860786838
price: $165.00   hardcover

The studies in Late Antique and Byzantine Ivory Carving concern the roles of both luxurious and less expensive materials in those periods when carved ivory reached its largest audience and performed the widest range of functions before the advent of industrial production in the Gothic era.
Starting from fundamental considerations of the varying availability of raw materials, workshop organization, distribution and social applications of ivory and bone, Cutler proceeds to an examination of the main classes of objects produced in the Roman and Byzantine worlds. Many of the papers treat such broad topics as the consular diptychs, icons, and boxes displaying mythological or Christian themes, while others focus on well-known individual pieces.
Contents: Of first principles and second thoughts; Five lessons in late Roman ivory; Suspicio Symmachorum: a postcript; Barberiniana: notes on the making, content, and provenance of Louvre, OA. 9063; The making of the Justinian diptychs; "Roma" and "Constantinopolis" in Vienna; Late antique or medieval? The "Consul" in the Prague Castle library and the question of "recarved" ivory diptychs; Le Consulardiptychen de Richard Delbrück et l'hégémonie de la Klassische Archäologie; An imperial Byzantine casket and its fate at a humanist's hands; Inscriptions and iconography on some middle Byzantine ivories: the monuments and their dating; The date and significance of the Romanos ivory; An ivory triptych wing in the Benaki Museum; Pas oikos Israel: Ezekiel and the politics of resurrection in 10th-century Byzantium; A newly-discovered Byzantine ivory and its relatives in London; Un triptyque byzantin en ivoire: La Nativité du Louvre; On Byzantine boxes; Index.