IVORY CARVINGS 41 



sixteenth century were fired with their unartistic zeal 

 through fervent study of the Old Testament writers, and 

 we must remember that all the leading principles of Mo- 

 hammed's religious teaching were directly based upon his 

 second-hand knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures. 



A rhetor named Cyprus is credited with having pro- 

 duced an ivory statuette (or possibly a chryselephantine 

 statue) of Empress Helena, the pious mother of Constan- 

 tine the Great, and to have donated his work to a church; 

 but this is a rare instance, the almost total absence of ivory 

 statuettes in the medieval East being in marked contrast 

 with their abundance in the West, especially among 

 the ivory carvings of the glorious French Renaissance 

 period.* 



The famous Abbot Suger of St. Denis states that in his 

 time (1122-1152) there was in the abbey church a reading- 

 desk enriched with ivory reliefs of such striking artistic 

 quality that the like could not be produced in his age. That 

 these belonged to the Carolingian Age is the opinion of M. 

 Labarte, as Charlemagne completed the reconstruction of 

 the church which had been begun by his father Pepin, and 

 dedicated it in 775 A. D.f 



A thoroughly typical example of Carolingian art is a 

 plaque used as the cover of an evangelium in the Biblio- 

 theque Nationale. This work, which came from the Cathe- 

 dral of Metz, surpasses in conception and execution almost 

 all other productions of the Metz school of carvers, so much 

 so, indeed, that some have seen in it a work of an earlier 

 period, perhaps the sixth century, from the hand of an Italic 

 carver who still retained much of the classic spirit. The 

 vitality and virility of the design is exhibited by the treat- 



*See O. M. Dalton, "Byzantine Art and Archaeology," Oxford, 1911, p. 188. 

 fLabarte, op. cit., pp. 218, 219. From Sugerii, Abb. S. Dionys., "De rebus in admin, 

 sua gestis," apud Duchesne, "Hist. Franc, script.," Vol. IV, p. 331. 



