Gardners Art through the Ages A Global History

Luxury Arts 307

I

vory has been prized since the earliest times, when Ice Age artists
fashioned the tusks of European mammoths into pendants,
beads, and other items for body adornment, and, occasionally, stat-
uettes (FIG. 1-4). The primary ivory sources in the historical period
have been the elephants of India and especially Africa, where the
species is larger than the Asian counterpart and the tusks longer,
heavier, and of finer grain. African elephant tusks 5 to 6 feet in
length and weighing 10 pounds are common, but tusks of male ele-
phants can be 10 feet long or more and weigh more than 100
pounds. Carved ivories are familiar, if precious, finds at Mesopo-
tamian and Egyptian sites, and ivory objects were manufactured and
coveted in the prehistoric Aegean and throughout the classical
world. Most frequently employed then for household objects, small
votive offerings, and gifts to the deceased, ivory also could be used
for grandiose statues such as Phidias’s Athena Parthenos (FIG. 5-46).
The Greeks and Romans admired ivory both for its beauty and
because of its exotic origin. Elephant tusks were costly imports, and
Roman generals proudly displayed them in triumphal processions
when they paraded the spoils of war before the people. (In FIG. 12-14

a barbarian brings tribute to a Byzantine emperor in the form of an

ivory tusk.)

Adding to the expense of the material itself was the fact that

only highly skilled artisans were capable of working in ivory. The

tusks were very hard and of irregular shape, and the ivory workers

needed a full toolbox of saws, chisels, knives, files, and gravers close

at hand to cut the tusks into blocks for statuettes or thin plaques

decorated with relief figures and ornament.

In Late Antiquity and the early medieval period, ivory was

employed most frequently for book covers, chests and boxes (FIG.

11-22), and diptychs (FIGS. 11-23and 12-15). A diptych is a pair of

hinged tablets, usually of wood, with a wax layer on the inner sides

for writing letters and other documents. (Both the court scribe

recording Jesus’ trial in the Rossano Gospels,FIG. 11-21,and the

woman in a painted portrait from Pompeii,FIG. 10-25,hold wooden

diptychs.) Diptychs fashioned out of ivory generally were created for

ceremonial and official purposes—for example, to announce the

election of a consul or a marriage between two wealthy families or to

commemorate the death of an elevated member of society.

Ivory Carving

MATERIALS AND TECHNIQUES

11-22Suicide of Judas and Crucifixion of Christ, plaque from a box, ca. 420. Ivory, 3 3 7 – 8 . British Museum, London.

This plaque from a luxurious ivory box is the first known representation of the Crucifixion. Christ is a beardless youth who

experiences no pain. At the left, Judas, his betrayer, hangs himself.

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