IVORY CARVINGS 73 



showing both strength and beauty of design; this was from 

 the Musee des Antiquites de la Seine-Inferieure. A re- 

 markable diptych (fourteenth-century work, loaned by M. 

 Boy) shows six bold, strongly marked reliefs embodying 

 designs from New Testament history, the Entry into Je- 

 rusalem, the Washing of Feet, the Scene in the Garden of 

 Gethsemane, the Last Supper, the Gift of Tongues, and 

 the Ascension; in the last-named scene, because of the exi- 

 guity of the available space, the artist is able to show only 

 the lower part of the garment of the ascending Christ, 

 giving somewhat the effect of a figure disappearing in the 

 flies of a theatre. From the fifteenth century perhaps the 

 most important piece was an Annunciation from the Musee 

 de Langres, the two figures of the Virgin and the Angel 

 Gabriel (kneeling) being sculptured in the round and placed 

 on a base. While the attitudes are animated and the com- 

 position effective in its way, it somehow fails to impress 

 us as do the best of the Early Renaissance figures; the 

 straining after effect is a little too apparent in spite of the 

 unquestionable technical excellence of the work. 



The very fact that the ivory carver's task is rendered 

 more difficult by the strictly limited size of the mass or 

 surface at his command forced him to intensify the quality 

 of his design, and to tax his ingenuity to the utmost in 

 his effort to portray his theme effectively within such nar- 

 row limits; indeed, he had to contend with much the same 

 difficulties as those confronting the medallist. In statu- 

 ettes the obligation to adapt the pose of the figure to the 

 curve of the tusk led to certain peculiar and constrained 

 attitudes, and it is an exceedingly curious circumstance 

 that we can trace in some of the stone sculpture of the heyday 

 of ivory carving a strong tendency to copy this slight dis- 

 tortion or twist of the figure although the stone sculptor had 

 no excuse for so doing. This peculiarity can be accounted 



