Carolingian Art - Sculpture and Metalwork

Sculpture and Metalwork

Luxury Carolingian manuscripts were intended to have treasure bindings - ornate covers in precious metal set with jewels around central carved ivory panels - sometimes these were donated some time after the manuscript itself was produced. Only a few such covers have survived intact, but many of the ivory panels survive detached, where the covers have been broken up for their materials. The subjects were often narrative religious scenes in vertical sections, largely derived from Late Antique paintings and carvings, as were those with more hieratic images derived from consular diptychs and other imperial art, such as the front and back covers of the Lorsch Gospels, which adapt a 6th century Imperial triumph to the triumph of Christ and the Virgin.

Important Carolingian examples of goldsmith's work include the upper cover of the Lindau Gospels; the cover of the Codex Aureus of St. Emmeram, which can be precisely dated to 870, is probably a product of the same workshop, though there are differences of style. This workshop is associated with the Holy Roman Emperor Charles II (the Bald), and often called his "Palace School". Its location (if it had a fixed one) remains uncertain and much discussed, but Saint-Denis Abbey outside Paris is one leading possibility. The Arnulf Ciborium (a miniature architectural ciborium rather than the vessel for hosts), now in the Munich Residenz, is the third major work in the group; all three have fine relief figures in repoussé gold. Another work associated with the workshop is the frame of an antique serpentine dish in the Louvre. Recent scholars tend to group the Lindau Gospels and the Arnulf Ciborium in closer relation to each other than the Codex Aureus to either.

Charlemagne revived large-scale bronze casting when he created a foundry at Aachen which cast the doors for his palace chapel, in imitation of Roman designs. The chapel also had a now lost life-size crucifix, with the figure of Christ in gold, the first known work of this type, which was to become so important a feature of medieval church art. Probably a wooden figure was mechanically gilded, as with the Ottonian Golden Madonna of Essen.

One of the finest examples of Carolingian goldsmiths' work is the Golden Altar (824–859) (picture:altar), also known as the Paliotto, in the Basilica of Sant'Ambrogio in Milan. The altars four sides are decorated with images in gold and silver repoussé, framed by borders of filigree, precious stones and enamel.

The Lothair Crystal, of the middle of the 9th century, is one the largest of a group of about 20 engraved pieces of rock crystal which survive; this shows large numbers of figures in several scenes showing the unusual subject of the story of Suzanna.