40 IVORY AND THE ELEPHANT 



Hincmar, Bishop of Rheims, had the works of St. Jerome 

 enclosed in covers adorned with ivory tablets in a gold 

 setting, and he also had a lectionary provided with covers of 

 ivory set in silver.* 



Two ivory plaques in the Musee de Cluny are specimens 

 of the Byzantine art of the ninth century and are especially 

 noteworthy in that in each case while one side bears a dis- 

 tinctly religious decoration, the other side offers secular 

 designs, including figured symbols of four of the zodiacal 

 signs (two on each plaque) Capricornus, Sagittarius, Aqua- 

 rius, and Leo. Rich foliage work and scrollwork combine 

 to make a very harmonious design, indicating the posses- 

 sion of both taste and skill by the artist. 



The hieratic art of the ninth century is well illustrated 

 in a representation of the Crucifixion on the cover of an 

 evangelium in the Musee de Cluny, uncompromisingly 

 rigid in composition; the absolute symmetry of the group- 

 ing is as far removed as possible from the ease and grace 

 characterizing the best works of an earlier and a later period, 

 and yet we may not deny the genuine religious spirit in 

 which the medieval artist has wrought. 



But few ivory statuettes were made by the carvers of 

 the Eastern Empire, this being due in great part to the 

 general influence of iconoclastic ideas in the Empire, even 

 when these were not drastically enforced as was from time 

 to time the case. Intense as was the opposition between 

 Christian and Moslem in the East, it appears likely that the 

 Christian image-breakers drew their inspiration from the 

 rigid ideas regarding images and the reverencing of images 

 that were so strongly held by the Mohammedans. In a 

 not dissimilar way, the Protestant image-breakers of the 



*Jules Labarte, "Histoire des arts industriels au Moyen Age et a I'epoque de la Re- 

 naissance," Vol. I, Paris, 1864, p. 213: Citing Anonymi Gesta episcop. Cameracensium, 

 lib. 1, 42, apud. Pertz, "Mon. Germaniae hist.," Vol. IX, p. 416, and Flodoardi, "Eccl. 

 Bemensis hist.," lib. Ill, cap. 5, Paris, 1611, pp. 159, 160. 



