'Italo-Byzantine' ivory and issues in the definition of 'Byzantine' art

The principal research question that this project addresses is how to define the limits of Byzantine art, in terms of geographic and qualitative range. Museums and Exhibitions tend to display only the highest quality works, and these have reinforced a perception of Byzantine art as being essentially imperial/court commissions of high quality products. This is particularly the case with objects made from luxury, expensive materials such as ivory. Lower quality products, particularly in ivory, have tended to be assigned to locations outside the political and cultural borders of the empire. This has led to a modern intellectual model of empire in which Byzantium creates and disseminates art, and surrounding cultures copy and emulate. The automatic assignation by modern art historians of low quality art to the neighbours of the Byzantine Empire reinforces the idea of the supremacy of Byzantium itself. A recent spate of general books on Byzantine art has reinforced this idea of Byzantine art, reflecting the centralised model of the imperial governmental bureaucracy. Art which does not fit this presumed model is excluded. The articles I have written respond to that model of the empire and its art, and expose the assumptions that underlie it.

The project examines the methodology underlying the categorisation of Byzantine ivories, and explores other possible models for the generation of lower quality art within the empire. In particular I have researched a more diverse and speculative form of artistic production not dominated by imperial and court patronage, but possibly more market driven and responsive to the various diverse audiences for art within the borders of the empire. I have explored whether a more diverse and heterogeneous model of Byzantine art, and indeed of the Byzantine Empire, is feasible.

The work has focused on two ivories in London Museums: the Clephane horn [an eleventh-century Oliphant in the British Museum] and a plaque of the Last Judgement [twelfth century, Victoria & Albert Museum]. These ivories, which were both central to the 1930 article of Andrew Keck which first defined the existence of ltalo-Byzantine ivories, have received little attention since. They raise distinct, but related questions.

The Clephane horn is decorated with images of chariot-racing, and this iconography has often been assumed to imply a Constantinopolitan origin for the piece. Its genre, however, has no precedents within Byzantium -most Oliphant's are either western or Islamic- and its style cannot easily be paralleled within the empire.
This demonstrates the problems scholars have faced in assigning this object a home in the medieval world. Equally, by c.1100, the presumed date of the Oliphant, chariot-racing seems to have lost all its earlier imperial resonances to a Byzantine audience, whilst remaining a potent symbol to visitors to the empire (evidence from Venice and Kiev).The study of the Clephane horn, then, allows questions of audience and reception to be examined, and of the alternative histories that can be created for objects without provenance, depending on which elements of the object are emphasised I style, genre, iconography, or audience.

The Last judgement ivory, on the other hand, has an iconography and style which have traditionally been linked to Italy. Here, the assignation to Italy is much more subjectively determined. This is an attribution that has never been fully analysed. My examination of this ivory re-evaluates the group of ltalo-Byzantine ivory, and proposes that this group was made within the empire, probably in Constantinople, but for a different, non-imperial audience than that traditionally assumed for ivories. It raises questions about the nature of the market for ivory in the middle ages and alternative views of the production, commissioning and sale of art.