File:The ivory workers of the middle ages (1906) (14593342300).jpg

Identifier: ivoryworkersmidage00cust (find matches)
Title: The ivory workers of the middle ages
Year: 1906 (1900s)
Authors: Cust, Anna Maria Elizabeth
Subjects: Ivories
Publisher: London, G. Bell and sons
Contributing Library: Getty Research Institute
Digitizing Sponsor: Getty Research Institute

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dreducing decoration to geometrical motives andscroll work, as is the case of Arabian art. Theophilus was succeeded by his widow, theEmpress Theodora, who governing in the name ofher infant son Michael III., promptly reversed allthe edicts of her husband and his predecessors,and endeared herself to the Greeks, by the re-storation of their beloved images, and the finaldefeat of the iconoclastic party, which was accom-plished about 842. Though there was a sensible difference afterthis movement, still it is easy to exaggerate itsinfluence on Byzantine art. The edicts of theEmperor were not always carried out to the letter, 72 LATIN AND BYZANTINE IVORIES except, perhaps, in the capital city, and even therethe smaller objects were secreted, and women,always conservative, clung to \k\€\xlaresd.xidipenates,keeping up the old observances as much as pos-sible. Many an obstinate monk took pride andpleasure in setting the law at defiance, carvinglittle diptychs with the decoration on the inner
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(victoria and albert museum, LONDON 14. OLIPHAXTOriental-Byzantine, ninth and tenth centuries side, so that they could be folded together andslipped away in safety. The civil art went on uninterruptedly, and in sucha luxurious city the objects of secular use must havebeen very rich and varied. A large series ofcaskets have come down to us, preserved in thetreasuries of churches as shrines for the relicsof saints, also large oliphants, or complete tusks, / J IVORY WORKERS hollowed out and thickly covered with linkedpatterns of strongly oriental style ; these were firstimported from the East and afterwards imitatedmore or less exactly by Byzantine craftsmen. Inearly ritual they were used as horns to announcethe commencement and the end of the Mass,and also to contain relics, and it was the latteruse which brought them in such numbers to theWest. The miniaturists, also, continued their art,copying and illustrating texts of Homer and Virgiland other classical writers. The iconoclastic mov

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