NORTHERN ITALIAN, CIRCA 11TH CENTURY | DOUBLE-SIDED RELIEF FRAGMENT FROM A BALUSTRADE PANEL WITH A SAGITTARIUS

Jacques and Henriette Schumann, Paris;

their sale, Christie's Paris, 30 September 2003, lot 149 (part lot)

Double-sided stone reliefs from the Byzantine and Byzantine-influenced world often served as balustrade panels in ecclesiastical settings. The present fragment is particularly evocative of this period, in which Pagan imagery was appropriated within a Christian context. The figure depicted on one side is clearly identifiable as a Centaur, the half-man, half-horse creatures from classical mythology. The motif of a Centaur as an archer finds its origin in the mythological figure of Chiron, the teacher of Achilles, and was later adopted to depict the Sagittarius in early illustrated calendars. See, for example, fol. 18v from the Melisende Psalter of 1131-1143 held at the British Library (Egerton MS 1139). Centaurs also appeared in Romanesque stone reliefs in Italy, such as an 11th-century frieze from Rome illustrated in Volbach, op. cit., no. 6720, and reliefs from circa 1100 decorating the church of Saint Ambrose in Milan. The geometric motifs carved on the reverse of the relief, comprising interlace and stylised stars and foliage, is characteristic of Middle Byzantine designs which were widely adopted in Venice and beyond; compare several similarly decorated panels from Venice, dated to the 10th and 11th centuries, published in Volbach, op. cit. (nos. 7, 2757) and Rizzi, op. cit. (fig. 769).

RELATED LITERATURE

W. F. Volbach, Mittelalterliche Bildwerke aus Italian und Byzanz, Berlin, 1930; A. Rizzi, Scultura esterna a Venezia. Corpus delle sculture erratiche all'aperto di Venezia della sua laguna, Venice, 1987; H. C. Evans and W. D. Wixom (eds.), The Glory of Byzantium: Art and Culture of the Middle Byzantine Era, A.D. 843-1261, exh. cat. New York, 1997, p. 38