Figures In Relief Research Articles

Relief with Crucifixion Scene in St Martin’s Church in Jawor – the Oldest Silesian Pictorial Epitaph and its Ideological and Artistic Contexts

This paper provides an analysis of the relief block with the Crucifixion scene preserved in the St. Martin’s parish church in Jawor, an important town in the Duchy Jawor-Świdnica in the 14th century. According to the 17th century’s written sources the relief was originally located on the wall of the church’s cemetery mortuary, however the primary written source pertaining to the artwork in question is the inscription running along its three sides. The slab commemorates Johann Sapiens and his family. It is the earliest preserved pictorial epitaph in Silesia and in this part of Europe. Its votive purpose is stated. Moreover, a passage referring to biblical texts as well as formulations, which entered into the consecration rites of churches and altars, provide a premise to interpret this family memorial and epitaph, at the same time, also as an ossuary foundation memorial. These circumstances allow searching for possible models and references in places where the pictorial epitaph found favourable conditions for development already at the dawn of its existence as a type of sepulchral monument. At first sight, Thuringia with Erfurt seem the place geographically closest to Silesia, where stylistically and typologically related artworks have been preserved. However, the crucifix depicted in the relief from Jawor turned out to be rather typical for the contemporary Silesian sculpture too, in contrast to the assisting figures of Virgin Mary and St. John. In consequence, the references and sources of inspiration applied in the process of creation of the assisting figures in relief from Jawor should be searched in western territories of Silesia or having regard to the possibility of drawing inspiration from much older portable microplastic objects as, for example, Byzantine or Romanesque ivory.

Tarihöncesi Dönemlerde Anadolu ile Balkanlar Arasındaki Kültür İlişkileri ve Trakya'da Yapılan Yeni Kazı Çalışmaları

Tarihöncesi Dönemlerde Anadolu ile Balkanlar Arasındaki Kültür İlişkileri ve Trakya'da Yapılan Yeni Kazı Çalışmaları

Iberian Art with Greek Influence: The Funerary Monument of Jumilla (Murcia, Spain)

A rectangular funerary monument of the fourth-third century B.C. from the necropolis of Coimbra del Barranco Ancho de Jumilla (province of Murcia) is presented. The monument has figures in relief on all four sides—three horsemen, a youth, and a seated woman—and represents a scene of farewell comparable to those on late Classical Greek grave stelae. Although the Jumilla monument is of local manufacture and may be compared to many other works of Iberian art, it also is a testimony to the influence of Greek art in the Iberian peninsula.

El relieve romano de Coves de Vinromá (Castellón)

Se estudia un fragmento del frontón de un pequeño naiskos con dos figuras en relive: un busto de un joven coronado, dentro de una corona, y una figura femenina anciana; el joven puede corresponder a un soldado o triunfador, y la mujer posiblemente a su madre, representada según la iconografía del invierno característica de algunos mosaicos tardorromanos. Detalles iconográficos de ambas figuras permiten proponer una datación en las últimas décadas del siglo II d. C. o a comienzos del III d. C.

Fragments of Assyrian Monuments

Several Assyrian cities contained free-standing obelisks or other monuments of stone with registers of carved decoration. This article presents fragments of such monuments now in the British Museum Department of Western Asiatic Antiquities, with references to others known to me.Layard (1849: II, 53, 58) records that, during his brief soundings at Assur in 1847, one of his workmen “also picked up, amongst the rubbish, … several bits of black stone with small figures in relief, which appeared to have belonged to an obelisk, like that dug up at Nimroud”, and that his trenches, somewhere on the mound, produced “bits of basalt, with small figures in relief”. The British Museum has the following two fragments, from this period of Layard's work in Assyria, which are indeed entered in the original acquisitions register of the then Department of Antiquities as coming from Kalah Shergat, i.e. from Assur.

III.—Medieval Copper Champlevé Enamelled Images of the Virgin and Child

In the group of images in the round with which this study is primarily concerned, the Virgin Mary is represented enthroned and holding the Child Christ on her left knee. He usually is seated, but sometimes stands. Two distinct methods of construction appear in these images: in one, a carved wooden core is overlaid with thin, but stiffish, sheets of copper shaped to conform closely to the surface of the carving; in the other, the image is constituted of stout sheets of copper beaten into shape and is hollow. It may be presumed that the craftsmen who made these images were heirs respectively of two separate traditions—one, that of sheathing a wooden core with metal; the other, that of applying metal figures in relief upon a champlevé enamelled surface. The images of both types are enriched with champlevé enamels. Perhaps some of the wooden-cored ones were sheathed to keep them from disintegration through decay or the ravages of worms, because of the special veneration in which they were currently held, but there are a number whose cores look to have been carved with an immediate view to employment as foundations for their present metallic casings. Most of the images, whether cored or coreless, would seem to have been made in the same region, and conceivably by one lot of workshops fairly closely associated with each other.

The Horn of Ulph

The Horn of Ulph is one of the principal treasures of York Minster. It is exhibited in the Chapter House, and is well-known to visitors; but in spite of its fame this celebrated antiquity cannot be studied quickly and conveniently away from the Minster,l and the Dean of York has therefore rendered an important service to scholars by allowing Mr C. J. P. Cave to take the fine photographs reproduced here (PLATES I-V).The horn is one of the so-called ‘oliphants’, i.e. horns made from tusks of elephant-ivory, and it is a particularly noble example, being both large and handsome, with a maximum length of 2 feet 4 inches and a mouth 5 inches in diameter. The ivory has coloured to a warm orange brown with rich cloudings and gradations in tone, the sunken fields in the carved zones having darkened almost to black; but though it is thus venerable in appearance, the horn is excellently preserved, and the unimpaired lustrous gIeam of the figures in relief and of the unornamented surface does much to enhance the mellow beauty of this magnificent piece. The shaft is faceted on the top and bottom with a gentle ribbing, as soft as the ‘bone’ of a good Malacca cane; but the flanks are rounded, and the section near the mouth is a natural oval. The metal fittings are silver-work of the 17th century, and consist of a plain rim and two inscribed bands to which are fastened the ends of the chain. The Latin inscription on the mounts states that the horn, having been given [to the Minster] by Ulph, a chieftain of western Deira, with all his lands, was subsequently lost or stolen, and afterwards restored and re-mounted by Henry Lord Fairfax in 1675.

A Handbook to Roman Pottery1

THE term “terra sigillata,” denoting certain well-known classes of Roman pottery, may be unfamiliar to the ordinary reader, but it is gradually coming into use in place of the somewhat misleading “Samian ware” of the nineteenth-century antiquarian. The late Prof. Haver-field, indeed, stoutly upheld the use of the older term; but it is open to decided objections, being purely conventional, unhistorical, and non-descriptive. Such expressions as “Roman red-glazed ware,”“Gaulish red ware,” etc., may be more accurate, but are not sufficiently definitive. The authors of the work under review have, therefore, followed Continental precedent and adopted this term, which strictly denotes “clay decorated with stamped patterns” (from sigillum, a stamp). The ware with which they deal is the pottery produced under the Roman Empire and found in all parts of Western Europe, which is marked by the use of a fine red paste and a lustrous red glaze, and usually ornamented by means of patterns and figures in relief.

VI. Explanation of an antique Bacchanalian Cup, by the Rev. Stephen Weston, B.D. F.R.S. and F.A.S. In a Letter to the Marquis Townshend of Raynham, and Earl of Leicester, President

I exhibit to your Lordship, and the Society, an antique Bacchanalian Cup, with figures in relief on it, which I will endeavour to explain.The figures on this circular Cup of glazed pottery (Pl. X.) represent the constant flux and reflux of animated beings, arriving and departing, advancing and retiring, originating from water, and refreshed by wine.