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Ivory Casket

Collection: Gray's School of Art Collection
Object Type: Print
Artist/Maker: The Arundel Society for Promoting the Knowledge of Art
Place Made: London, United Kingdom
Date: 1870
Media/Materials: ink on paper
Dimensions: overall: 57.5 cm x 44 cm

Description:

Chromolithograph of an ivory casket.

Bottom of print reads:
Ivory Casket.
Byzantine. Thirteenth Century.

Additional frontispiece reads:
Ivory Casket.
This casket represents the art of Byzantium as applied to ivory in its decadence. From the earliest centuries of our era this material had been employed for diptychs and other objects of secular and ecclesiastical use, and some of the highest specimens of this art date from the eleventh century. At that period it seems to have touched its culminating point, and in the succeeding centuries a great falling off is observable both in style and importance of the objects to which it was applied.
The present specimen, which is probably of the fifteenth century, displays a class of decoration which was soon afterwards carried by Byzantine artists into Northern Europe.
It was purchased from Mr Pratt in 1859 for the sum of £10. Height 4 3/4 in., Length 7 3/8 in., Width 4 in. Register Number 4535-1859


Object Number: ABDRG2019.2.14