The Harbaville Triptych
Unknown (Constantinople, Romanos group) · 940-960
Two wings fold over a central panel to make a portable altar small enough to carry in a bag. Open, it shows the Deesis in the upper register: Christ enthroned, his hand raised in blessing, between the Virgin and John the Baptist, who turn toward him to intercede for humanity. Above the throne, two angels in bust length appear in wreaths of leaves picked out with stars. Below, separated by a band of palmettes and flowers, stand five apostles, Peter in the centre with Paul and Andrew on one side and John the Evangelist and James on the other. Every figure except the angels is named by an inscription cut beside it, and the wings add ranks of soldier saints and bishops.
The carving is unusually deep for ivory, so that the figures cast real shadows, and the faces are cut with a fineness that rewards a close look: small mouths, wide eyes, hair rendered stroke by stroke. Traces of gilding and red paint survive in the folds. The proportions are long and elegant, the drapery falls in quiet vertical lines, and the whole has the restrained classicism of the workshop that scholars call the Romanos group, after an ivory in Paris showing the emperor Romanos crowned by Christ. Turn to the back, when a mirror or photograph allows it: a large cross flowers among plants and stars, flanked by cypresses, with the Greek words Jesus Christ conquers.
Made in Constantinople between about 940 and 960, the triptych belongs to the revival of classical taste under the Macedonian dynasty. It was in the collection of Beugny de Pommeras at Arras early in the nineteenth century, passed to his son-in-law Louis-François Harbaville, whose name it keeps, and then to his grandsons. The Louvre bought it from the dealer Mannheim in 1891, and it has since become the best-known Byzantine ivory in the museum.
Did You Know? The ivory is named not after a saint or an emperor but after Louis-François Harbaville, a nineteenth-century collector from Arras.
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