Cupids Defending a Woman against Two Centaurs

In a strip of ivory barely fourteen centimetres high, a woman struggles between two centaurs while a swarm of winged babies comes to her rescue. Two of them tie up the first centaur; two others try to stop the second by grabbing his scarf or seizing his rump with their plump little hands. The story comes from the battle of the Lapiths and the centaurs, when the horse-men tried to carry off the Lapith women, but nothing here is epic. The tone is playful and meant to make you smile. Look at how the sculptor cut the relief right through the thick plaque, building it on a kind of grid that lets the draperies, the hair and the little ropes stand free, and at the contrast between polished skin and rough manes.