BYZANTINE BONE PLAQUE DEPICTING A PORTRAIT OF A SAINT. CIRCA: 12TH-13TH CENTURY A.D.

拍品描述

A BYZANTINE CARVED BONE PLAQUE WITH THE BUST OF A SAINT, EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN, CIRCA 12TH-13TH CENTURY A.D. Of rectangular form, the small plaque carved in low relief with the frontal bust of a haloed figure set within a raised oval medallion. The medallion is bordered by a band of ring-and-dot punchmarks, a second inner row of finer punched circles defining the nimbus. The saint is shown youthful and beardless, with short striated hair combed forward across the brow, large almond-shaped eyes beneath incised brows, a long straight nose, and a small closed mouth. The figure wears a tunic and mantle, the drapery indicated by deep parallel folds falling from the shoulders, and holds in the hands before the chest what appears to be a book or reliquary casket, gripped by both hands with the fingers summarily indicated. The corners of the plaque outside the medallion are cut back to a chamfered ground, retaining earthen encrustation and iron-oxide staining consistent with long burial. The bone has taken a warm cream and pale green patina. The frontal bust format, contained within a beaded oval, follows a compositional type long established in Byzantine devotional imagery, adapted from imperial portrait medallions and from the ivory and steatite icons produced for private use from the middle Byzantine period onward. The figure's youthful, beardless appearance and the object held at the chest suggest one of the younger apostolic or evangelist saints, most plausibly John the Theologian or one of the physician saints such as Panteleimon, though the abraded surface prevents secure identification. The ring-and-dot punchwork forming the halo and border is a technique inherited from late antique bone carving and remained a stock decorative device in provincial Byzantine workshops. Bone was the ordinary substitute for ivory in Byzantine carving, and its use should not be read as humble in intent. Elephant ivory reached the empire through Fatimid and later Ayyubid intermediaries and was reserved for court and high ecclesiastical commissions; bovine and equine bone allowed the same iconographic repertoire to be produced for a wider clientele of monasteries, parish clergy, and lay devotees. Small plaques of this scale were mounted into caskets, book covers, and reliquary boxes, or set as devotional objects in private household shrines. The reduction of the composition to a single haloed bust within a medallion is characteristic of the later middle Byzantine and early Palaiologan production, when standardised iconic formulae circulated widely across the eastern Mediterranean. This plaque exemplifies the domestic devotional carving of the middle to late Byzantine world, in which the visual language of the great ivories and enamels was translated into the more accessible medium of bone for a broad devotional market. Its interest lies in the survival of the punched border technique and in the reduction of the saintly image to its essential frontal formula, a formula that would carry forward into the icon tradition of the succeeding centuries. Dimensions: Height 4 cm

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