Reliquary Icon of the Nativity
Unknown (Italo-Byzantine workshop; Constantinople for the frame) · Twelfth century (ivory); 1085-1115 (silver frame); made a reliquary in the fourteenth or fifteenth century
A thick wooden board, hollowed at the centre, holds a small ivory plaque of the Nativity: the Virgin reclines beside the manger, the ox and ass look on, shepherds adore the child and, at the bottom, two women give the newborn his first bath. Three thin ivory strips carved with palmettes frame the scene; the fourth, on the left, is a plaster replacement. Around the outside, four bands of gilded silver worked in relief are nailed to the wood, with medallions of saints standing out against elegant scrolling foliage. Greek inscriptions name them: Peter, the Mother of God, John the Forerunner, Paul, Andrew, Simon and others, reading from top to bottom.
The pieces belong to different times and places. The silver frame was made in Constantinople around 1085 to 1115 for an icon, while the ivory is a twelfth-century work from an Italo-Byzantine workshop in Italy. In the fourteenth or fifteenth century the icon was turned into a reliquary. It was in a collection in Australia before 1914, then belonged to Victor Martin Le Roy and his son-in-law Marquet de Vasselot, and the Louvre bought it in 1994.
Did You Know? The ivory picture, its silver frame and its reliquary function come from three different centuries and two different countries.
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