Title

Traditio Legis plaque

Anonimous

Generic classification

Object

Date

Century

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Material

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Inventory Number in Current Collection

Object history

No mention has been found, among the extensive original documentation preserved in the archives of the dioceses and monasteries of the kingdom of León, to locate the workshop of ivory artists in the city or the surrounding area since the days of kings Ferdinand I and Doña Sancha. With such beginnings, the task is complicated.

There is no doubt that the piece was made in the chronology and place indicated. We do not know if this work was among the ivories donated by the kings to receive the body of Saint Isidore in Leon in 1063, since the diploma of the donatio is extensive, but lacking in details. It is possible that among the cited codices some had this ebony cover, although other researchers identified it as the plate of a reliquary.

From medieval chronology we have no more news of the work, whose journey would take it from León to Florence and, finally, to Paris.

In the 19th century the medal was already in the Frédéric Spitzer collection, perhaps between the years 1852-1890, and it seems that it had been acquired in Florence in 1900 by M. Brauer, to be later purchased for the Louvre Museum.

The Viennese Frédéric Spitzer (1815-1890), who settled in Paris in 1852, became one of the most important art dealers in Europe, particularly interested in medieval art. Between 1890 and 1893 he published the monumental work entitled La Collection Spitzer. Antiquité-Moyen Age-Renaissance, Paris, consisting of VI volumes, with the first volume dedicated to ivories.

In this work our piece was already considered Spanish and was dated very accurately to the 11th century (sheet 27, p. 32), considering it a Gospel cover, and the inlays that the work has were identified as small "clous de métal" pieces. The volume saw the light of day with magnificent engravings on the preseas that made up the collection, where it is possible to observe other ivories, of Paleochristian, Carolingian, Romanesque and Gothic chronology.

In the center of one of the plates, numbered 59, appears an enthroned Majesty in mandorla, reminiscent of Hispanic models. Similarly, number 46 shows an ivory plaque from the chest of San Felices de San Millán de la Cogolla, while number 63 shows the plaque of the Traditio Legis from León.

We know that his collection was so large that, when it was dismembered, it ended up scattered in the British Museum in London, the Metropolitan Museum in New York and in The Frick Collection. It is known that this character had previously forged and sold original works to renowned collectors, such as William Randolph Hearst or Rothschild.

The next owner of the piece was Godefroy Brauer (1857-1923), a collector of medieval art whose collection enriched the French museum with the purchase of this ivory in 1900. The lists of pieces that this personage acquired are known, and we know that he also sold to other collectors, between 1905 and 1911, when the same J. P Morgan, who bought from him an 11th century Gospel Book, a manuscript of the Apocalypse dated in the 12th century and a Missal from Spain, from the year 1468, as Laredo (2023) has studied. We know precisely that from 1920 this personage made donations to the institution, of paintings, sculptures and, above all, sumptuary objects, among which the ivory of Al-Mughira is mentioned, and other valuable ebony pieces, as indicated in the book Les donateurs du Louvre, 1989, p. 86.

Description

This ivory plate -of elephant according to the cataloguing of the Louvre-, due to its rectangular format and the holes on its surface (trace of the nails with which it adhered to the wooden core) could be part of a reliquary, undoubtedly an unlikely option, although other authors have also linked it to its possible function as the cover of a codex, more specifically an Evangeliary.

The composition has as its most relevant and central image the Maiestas, in a double mandorla, in the form of a mystical almond that serves as the back of the throne and circular in the lower part, framing the royal furniture and the footstool, where the bare feet rest. While the first mandorla is defined by a simple border only ornamented by a single line, it stands out for the presence of at least 20 points or perforations that were undoubtedly arranged at the time to receive inlays. This solution is frequent within the Leonese workshop, although it has been much debated whether such pieces would be of precious materials, vitreous paste or jet, usual material and typical of this workshop in the decade of the fifties and sixties of the eleventh century.

Since Alfred Darcel's publication in 1890 it was believed that these elements were small metal nails but, according to Noemi Da Silva, the museum's ivory restorer, Juliette Levy, confirmed that they are round spheres of hard material, possibly glass, replaced some later by vitreous paste.

It highlights the richness of the throne, with a soft cushion, where the sculptor took great care to represent the work of this furniture, turned by the work of cabinetmaking. The throne stands out for the use of several ornamental typologies, such as the zigzag and, in addition, vegetables and a kind of scales. It is interesting that the lower part of the throne is articulated with four semicircular arches, which are also ornamented with small inlays, and which recall solutions typical of the workshop of goldsmiths and artificers of sumptuary objects of San Isidoro, as can be seen in the base of the chalice of Doña Urraca in the Museum of the Royal Collegiate Church.

It is very original that the lower mandorla is decorated with a sort of undulations reminiscent of textiles, although it is certainly not a conventional representation in forced and horizontal perspective of the image of a rich carpet, whose embroidered tops have small X-shaped incisions. More accurately it has been seen in that circle the image of the Earth, surrounded by waves, which could refer to Isaiah 66: 1: "Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool".

The figure of the Majesty, bearded and with cruciform nimbus is classic, with three holes for the stones on the cross, blessing and carrying the Holy Book. The treatment of the drapery and the finishing of the tunics and fabrics, the orophreses, is similar to that of other pieces from this workshop of Ebonized masters, as a comparison with the chest of the Beatitudes of the National Archaeological Museum of Madrid and the chest of St. Pelayo of the Museum of San Isidoro shows.

It is flanked by the images of Peter and Paul, the one on the left with locks of hair and baldness on the right, recalling models present in the monumental sculpture of the Isidorian church, as can be seen in the saints that are located in the spandrels of the door of the Perdón, sculpted on the model of some ivories, but in a chronology of between 1110 and 1120.

Saint Paul carries the book, decorated with a quatrefoil, which he raises and offers to the Majesty, breaking the floral frame that frames the composition. Very interesting are the supedaneous or the bases on which his feet rest, ornamented with a kind of flaking. This motif appears in the aforementioned Eburnean productions, but also in others from this workshop in the 11th century, such as the Christ in the Larcade Collection in Paris, although I think it is significant that they appear on the base where Doña Sancha rests her feet in the portrait of the Diurnal of the General Library of the University of Santiago de Compostela, dated 1055, which could suggest that the Leonese ivory workshop had been trained in miniaturist repertoires, some of which are now lost, but which existed a decade earlier.

The figure of St. Peter holds the keys (the same as those shown by the same saint in the Casket of the Ivories of the year 1059, already mentioned): he has received the keys of the Kingdom, in front of St. Paul, to whom Christ gave the book.

Above the nimbus of Christ appears the Agnus Dei, with the broken leg and the labarum, a composition reminiscent of the one that decorates the upper part of the lid of the ark of Saint Pelayo.

The four corners of the plate are occupied by the Tetramorphos. In the upper left part, St. Matthew, in human form and carrying the book; in the opposite, the eagle of St. John, in zoomorphic form. Below, the lion of St. Mark -apparently restored- and the bull of St. Luke, both framing a rich vegetal representation. It is very striking that the sculptor wanted to give a sumptuous aspect to the tendril because it housed dozens of stone inlays. The Agnus Dei and the Tetramorphos, with a cross, was a theme present in the reliquaries of the church of Fernando I, as evidenced by the lid sculpted in limestone, now unaccounted for, which we know from a photograph of the Institute of Cultural Heritage of Spain (Moráis 2014).

The compositional patterns on which the creation of the image of the evangelists is based is similar to the one on the reverse of the cross of Fernando I and Sancha isidoriana, today in the National Archaeological Museum of Madrid. Some scholars think that they are even the same sculpting hands.

In the lower part of the piece appear the four archangels: Michael, Gabriel, Raphael and Uriel -for some expert theologians it would be Fanuel-. It is revealing that those at the ends hold in their hands vegetal elements. The one on the left, with veiled hands, a palmette with seven hollows for inlays, and the one on the right, with hands without textile, holds a stem and points with the other. The angels below the Majesty hold textile elements in their hands, and in the background, the artist seems to have traced two arches and a column (in a very old solution that appears, for example, in the image of the Traditio Legis in the Metropolitan Museum of New York, ref. 16.174.3, and on which the chrism is raised) by means of a smooth incision. Some scholars identified these forms with a cross and under the feet of the angels: "the streams of the rivers of Paradise".

It is significant that the Louvre's catalogue card, very outdated, indicates that the cross of the Lamb is of the "Mozarabic style", a subject on which Spanish historiography has been reflecting for decades and with relevant conclusions that seem to be unknown, while the "bouquet of foliage" would allude to the Garden of Eden or the Tree of Life.

Rosaceae and vegetables were common in this type of scene, as in the image of Christ with St. Paul and St. Peter in another piece in the Metropolitan Museum of New York (inventory 18.145.5) with several flowers and sprouting shoots.

In conclusion: the ideologist of this image had the theme of the Traditio Legis, the giving of the Law, sculpted, following classical, Roman parameters, reconverted the scene in which the emperor delivered the scroll. From the paleochristian tradition Christ appears in Glory, as Dominus or Rex, as Psalm 19, 2 says: "the heavens proclaim the glory of God", image of wisdom itself, a theme well suited for the binding of a book.

To date, to our knowledge, there is no gemological or petrological study of the inlays, but it is very important that the catalogue card of the Louvre Museum indicates that they are "pearls" that adorned the eyes of the figures and enhanced the ornamental elements.

Romanesque experts know that the ivory workshop located in Leon, in those decades of the eleventh century, had very marked features. The use of jet was one of them. It was not exclusive to Leonese art at that time, as it was also used in other kingdoms of the Hispanic north and in the art of medieval ivory throughout Europe, but the reiteration of its use in León is striking and, above all, as it is perfectly documented, its sale in the city of León between the 11th and 12th centuries, with the places of production and trade located in the surroundings of the church of San Martín.

The ivory workshop of the Fernandine court marked an aesthetic milestone in peninsular Romanesque art and later artisans would use some of its formulas beyond the years 1100-1120. This Paris piece has lost its polychromy or gilding with gold leaf, if it had one, but it seems that in the left eye of St. Peter (Da Silva 2014), remains of an orange layer that covered it are preserved.

Locations

• Third quarter of the XI^th c.

  monastery

  Royal Collegiate Church of San Isidoro of León, León (Spain)

• ca. 1852 - ca. 1890

  private collection

  Frédéric Spitzer, Paris (France) *

• ca. 1900

  dealer/antiquarian

  Godefroy Brauer, Paris (France) *

• ca. 1900 - present

  museum

  Louvre Museum, Paris (France)