Rare pair of marble plaques carved in reserve... - Lot 2 - Pierre Bergé & Associés

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  3. Rare pair of marble plaques carved in reserve... - Lot 2 - Pierre Bergé & Associés
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10000 - 15000 EUR
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Result : 11 960EUR
Rare pair of marble plaques carved in reserve... - Lot 2 - Pierre Bergé & Associés
Rare pair of marble plaques carved in reserve and engraved representing the Virgin and Saint John. The Virgin, slightly turned to the right, raises her two hands in a gesture of intercession recalling the Virgin of the Deisis; she is dressed in a maphorion and a long tunic. Saint John, in a frontal position, holds a closed book in his left hand and rests his cheek on his other hand in a gesture of affliction. The two figures stand out against an ornamental background of a dense cluster of small four-petalled flowers bordered by a smooth frame. Lugduno-Viennese workshop, late 12th century Heights: 44.1 and 42.4 cm - Widths: 18.1 and 19 cm - Depths: 5.5 and 7 cm (wear to the features of the faces) The Virgin and St. John adopt attitudes inherited from Byzantium such as can be seen on Crucifixions adorning works from Constantinople or Carolingian workshops from the 10th to the 12th century: for the Virgin, hands open and raised, for John, carrying a book and hand to the face according to the ancient gesture of pain. The use of carving in reserve together with the engraved line and the use of modelling is very rare in French Romanesque art. The depiction of scenes on marble slabs is also unusual, unlike in Italian art. However, two other marble slabs, which passed in a Parisian sale at Piasa in December 2005, seem to come from the same production centre. Sealed for decades to the wall of a house in Manduel, not far from Nîmes, they depict Adam and Eve. One of them features the four-petalled flower seedling in the background (fig. a). In the catalogue entry, these two large plates were linked to several others in museums in the south of France, in Nîmes (fig.b), Avignon and Lyon (fig.c). It would therefore seem that a workshop provided churches in the south of France with this type of engraved or sculpted marble panels in low relief, some of which belong to iconographic cycles such as that of the Months or others depicting characters from the Apocalypse and the New Testament. The former curator of the museums of Nîmes, Victor Lasalle, who studied this subject at length, believes that the work was done by workshops in Lugduno-Vienna, which had strong Italian influences. These various panels were detached from their monuments at a very early date, probably before the 18th century, as is sometimes suggested by the fact that they belonged to local collections for many years. This is probably the case for the two small panels presented here, which were originally part of a Crucifixion. In a good state of preservation, apart from the wear and tear of the facial features, they bear witness to this late Provençal Romanesque art for which we cannot exclude the arrival in the region of Italian artists, thus importing into the churches this panelled decoration such as can be seen in northern Italy on chancels or fixed to walls. Works consulted: P. Pradel, Vestiges d'un zodiaque-calendrier nîmois du XIIIe siècle, Monuments et Mémoires de la fondation Piot, 55, Paris, 1967, p 105-113; J. Liéveaux-Boccador et E. Bresset, Statuaire médiévale de collection, Ed. Les clefs du Temps, 1972, T I; V. Lassalle, "Deux reliefs romans inédits représentant des scènes de l'Histoire d'Adam et Eve" in Hommage à André Dupont, Montpellier, 1974, p 185-192; V. Lassalle, Les sculptures romanes du Musée Archéologique de Nîmes, Nîmes, 1989, cat. 5, 6 and 7; Sale Paris Hôtel Drouot, Piasa, 7 December 2005, expert: L. Fligny, lot 39.
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