72 IVORY AND THE ELEPHANT
The
"Exposition Rétrospective," one of the most attractive features of the
great Paris Exposition of 1900,* contained a number of choice examples
of ivory carving, the exhibits being loaned by various institutions,
churches, and individual collectors. Among the examples of Roman-Greek
carving was the diptych of Justinianus (sixth century) later acquired
by Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan; several other good specimens of this and the
immediately succeeding periods served to illustrate the gradual
falling off in artistic excellence. A curious book cover from the tenth
century, known as the Evangélaire de Morienval, from the church of
Notre Dame de Noyon, offered a good example of the medieval ivory
carving of Western Europe under Byzantine influence. Very naturally,
the best ivories in this exhibition were of those worked in the
thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries by the great ivory
carvers of the French Renaissance School. Here the aim was to select a
number of thoroughly characteristic specimens, avoiding, as far as
possible, the monotony that might result from grouping together a
large number of examples of certain types of the Virgin and Child which
became more or less conventional in some of the Renaissance workshops.
It is interesting to note in this connection that the best of the
statuettes should be thirteenth-century work, the Angel Gabriel and the
Virgin of the Annunciation, loaned, respectively, by M. G. Chalandon
and M. P. Gamier. Here the restrained dignity of the pose, the classic
harmony of the drapery, the earnestness and beauty of the faces, show
us the pure art of the Early Renaissance at its best. From the
fourteenth century is one excellent example, a seated figure of the
Virgin bearing the Divine Child on her lap, an exceedingly
well-balanced composition,
•See Exposition Universelle de 1900, Catalogue officiel de l'exposition rétrospective de V art français.
