Crozier Head: Serpent and Falcon Attacking a Gazelle
Unknown · 1140-1200
The volute of the crozier, cut in ivory with flattened facets, ends in the head of a serpent or reptile with open jaws. Within the curve, a gazelle and a falcon seem to lock in combat, the bird swooping onto the animal while the serpent's head closes the circle above them. Traces of colour and gilding cling to the surface. The theme belongs to the desert animal repertoire that Christian workshops in southern Italy and Sicily inherited, at some distance, from Islamic art across the Mediterranean, and the piece is typical of the late twelfth century in that region, when Norman kings ruled Sicily and Arab, Byzantine and Latin craftsmen worked side by side.
The crozier head belonged to Gian Giacomo Trivulzio in Milan and later to the Paris banker and collector David David-Weill. In June nineteen forty his collection was packed into one hundred and thirty crates and deposited at the château de Sourches for safety; in April nineteen forty one the Nazi looting agency, the ERR, seized the whole lot and sent the crate holding the crozier to Germany. It came back to France after the war, and the Louvre purchased it in nineteen ninety five.
Did You Know? The crate that held this small ivory during the Second World War was labelled DW zero point thirteen and stored in a billiard room before the Nazis seized it.
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