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Caskets Inside Out. Revisiting the Classification of ‘Siculo-Arabic’ Ivories

  • Silvia Armando EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: November 29, 2017

Abstract

The paper reconsiders previous attempts to classify ‘Siculo-Arabic’ ivories in order to understand if and how such taxonomies correspond to concrete modes of production or workshops. The study of technical details enables the definition of processes of making. Material and visual aspects are probed through a systematic comparison based on the close study of many artefacts, thereby identifying consistent clusters that may correspond to one or more related workshop, as well as ruling out examples which cannot be directly associated with the main groups. Moreover, the traditional attribution to Southern Italy is reconsidered for some objects. The recovery of reused paper documents written in Arabic beneath the original linings of some of the caskets opens new paths of research, calling for future interdisciplinary cooperation, which may finally be able to answer longstanding questions about when and where these objects were originally made.

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Note

This article was written thanks to the support of the Hanns Swarzenski and Brigitte Horney Swarzenski Fellowship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, which I held in 2014/2015. I wish to thank Maria Andaloro, Maria Vittoria Fontana, Sarah Guérin, Charles T. Little, Mariam Rosser-Owen, Avinoam Shalem and Joseph C. Williams for their special support. I am grateful to Ralph Edler and Julia Perratore for revising my English. My friend and photographer Gaetano Alfano provided me with essential support in the post-production of several pictures. My brother Alessandro Armando helped me with the elaboration of the drawings and the chart. Other friends and colleagues are acknowledged in the footnotes. Finally, this article would not have been possible without the generous support of many ecclesiastical institutions, museums, and private collections, which allowed me to examine closely and photograph many ivory objects. I am deeply grateful to all those I met in those occasions. The reproduction of all these photographs is forbidden by any means.

The paper complements another essay provisionally titled “Painted, incised, incrusted ivories in the Cappella Palatina Treasury and the puzzling question of the ‘Siculo-Arabic’ ivories in the mediaeval Mediterranean”, which deals with the important case of the Cappella Palatina Treasury, as well as with key issues concerning this enigmatic group of ivories, such as chronological and geographical questions, socio-cultural environments of production and reception, the possible identities of craftsmen, and patronage. The essay was supposed to be published in a collective volume, but after waiting for more than eight years (and almost completely rewriting the paper in 2013), I recently decided to withdraw it, and I am currently looking for an appropriate place for publication. The essay represents an essential reference, therefore I mention it in the footnotes as Armando, confident that it will be soon available to scholars.


Published Online: 2017-11-29
Published in Print: 2017-12-20

© 2017 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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