Volute: Lamb of God (Agnus Dei); bird perched on the cross (now missing); dragon head; foliated decoration; pine cone.
Monster swallowing the base of the volute.
Knop: four Symbols of the Evangelists, angel of saint Matthew, eagle of saint John the Evangelist; ox of saint Luke and lion of saint Mark.
Longhurst 1929: Italy, 13th to 14th century.
Williamson and Davies 2014: Italian (Venice), c. 1350-70.
Attribution
Unknown
Polychromy - Gilding
Extensive of gilding and polychromy: gold (foliated scrolls, painted dragon, etc.), red (dragon's tongue; monster's ears).
Reverse
Carved in the round.
Object Condition
Missing: upper half of the cross.
Provenance
Collection of Hollingworth Magniac (b. 1786, d. 1867), Colworth, Bedfordshire, by 1862: his sale, Christie, Manson and Woods, London, 7 July 1892, lot 505; collection of Sir Thomas Gibson-Carmichael (b. 1859, d. 1926), Bart, Castle Craig: Gibson-Carmichael sale, Christie, Manson and Woods, London, 13 May 1902, lot 151; purchased at this sale by Museum through Messrs Durlacher Brothers, London.
Bibliography
A-C. Robinson, Catalogue of the Loan Exhibition, South Kensington Museum, London, 1862, no. 12, pp. 14-15.
A. Maskell, Ivories (Connoisseurs Library), (London, 1905), p. 202.
W. W. Watts, Catalogue of Pastoral Staves, Victoria and Albert Museum (London, 1924), no. 26, pl.16.
M. Longhurst, Catalogue of Carvings in Ivory, Victoria and Albert Museum, 2 vols (London, 1927 and 1929), II (1929), pp. 59-60, pl. LII.
O. von Falke, in Pantheon XVI (1935), p. 270.
P. B. Cott, Siculo-Arabic Ivories (Princeton, 1939), no. 176, pl. 65.
M. von Bárány-Oberschall, 'Baculus pastoralis. Keltisch-irische Motive auf mittelalterlichen beingeschnitzten Bischofsstäben', in Zeitschrift für Kunstwissenschaft, 12 (1958), p. 30.
B. Wolff-Łozínska, 'Grupa Włoskich Pastorałów z Kości Słoniowej i egzemplarz zachowany w Polsce', in Ars Auro Prior, Studia Ioanni Białostocki Sexagenario Dicata (Warsaw, 1981), p. 147, note 30.
P. Williamson and G. Davies, Medieval Ivory Carvings 1200-1550 (London, 2014), no. 151.
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