CAMBRIDGE LIBRARY CO LL E C TION Books of enduring scholarly value Cambridge The city of Cambridge received its royal charter in 1201, having already been home to Britons, Romans and Anglo-Saxons for many centuries. Cambridge University was founded soon afterwards and celebrates its octocentenary in 2009. This series explores the history and influence of Cambridge as a centre of science, learning, and discovery, its contributions to national and global politics and culture, and its inevitable controversies and scandals. Fitzwilliam Museum McClean Bequest Frank McClean (1837–1904) was not only a civil engineer, astronomer and pioneer of objective prism spectrography, but also an accomplished and systematic collector of ancient and medieval art. McClean’s collections, which were left to the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, on his death, were at that time the most notable bequest since the Museum’s foundation. They included illuminated manuscripts, early printed books, and the ancient and medieval decorative objects described in this catalogue. The medieval applied arts in particular were of immense value to the Museum’s holdings, representing extremely rare items not hitherto represented in it. This catalogue, prepared by O. M. Dalton, assistant keeper of British and medieval antiquities at the British Museum, in 1911-12, lists over 140 items: ivory carvings, enamels, jewellery, gems and a smaller number of Chinese, Japanese and Egyptian objects. Cambridge University Press has long been a pioneer in the reissuing of out-of-print titles from its own backlist, producing digital reprints of books that are still sought after by scholars and students but could not be reprinted economically using traditional technology. 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The Cambridge Library Collection will bring back to life books of enduring scholarly value across a wide range of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences and in science and technology. Fitzwilliam Museum McClean Bequest Catalogue of the Mediaeval Ivories, Enamels, Jewellery, Gems and Miscellaneous Objects Be- queathed to the Museum by Frank McClean, M.A., F.R.S. O.M. Dalton CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSIT Y PRESS Cambridge New York Melbourne Madrid Cape Town Singapore São Paolo Delhi Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108004411 © in this compilation Cambridge University Press 2009 This edition first published 1912 This digitally printed version 2009 ISBN 978-1-108-00441-1 This book reproduces the text of the original edition. The content and language reflect the beliefs, practices and terminology of their time, and have not been updated. FITZWILLIAM MUSEUM MCCLEAN BEQUEST CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Honbon: FETTER LANE, E.C. C. F. CLAY, MANAGER iili ffiSiniiutalj: 100, PRINCES STREET Berlin: A. ASHER AND CO. tUipjiB: F. A. BROCKHAUS UM» lorfe: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS nirt CTBlritttB: MACMIIXAN AND CO., LTD. All rights reserved FITZWILLIAM MUSEUM MCCLEAN BEQUEST CATALOGUE OF THE MEDIAEVAL IVORIES, ENAMELS, JEWELLERY, GEMS AND MISCELLANEOUS OBJECTS BEQUEATHED TO THE MUSEUM BY FRANK MACLEAN, M.A., F.R.S. BY O. M. DALTON, M.A. Cambridge: at the University Press 1912 PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A. AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS PREFACE ' I SHE present catalogue, though limited in extent, is concerned *- with objects of a kind presenting peculiar difficulties; I cannot claim to have surmounted all of these or to have avoided all the errors besetting the classification of similar works of art. In the Introduction I have tried to summarize our present knowledge, and to provide such references to the literature of each subject as will enable the reader to consult original sources of information. I wish to express my great indebtedness to Dr Montague James and Mr S. C. Cockerell for kind assistance rendered at various times during the preparation of the work, and in an especial degree to Dr C. H. Read of the British Museum, who has examined the collection with me and placed his wide knowledge freely at my disposal. The descriptions of nos. 108—109 and of the Egyptian, Assyrian and Babylonian objects, nos. 119—143, have been supplied by Mr F. W. Green, the Honorary Keeper of the Egyptian Department in the Fitzwilliam Museum. 0. M. D. BRITISH MUSEUM, 1911. TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE LIST OF PLATES ....... viii INTRODUCTION . i CATALOGUE ........ 78 Jewellery and Engraved Gems ... 78 Ivory Carvings ...... 84 Enamels ....... 100 Various Objects . 117 Chinese and Japanese Objects . 122 Egyptian Antiquities . 124 Assyrian and Babylonian Antiquities . 128 INDEX . ....... 129 LIST OF PLATES I. Prehistoric and early Teutonic jewellery. II. Gold brooch from Faversham ; 7th century. Frankish buckle ; 8th century. III. Jutish and Frankish jewellery of the 7th and 8th centuries. IV. Carved ivory panels; 6th century. V. Carved ivory panel; Carolingian, 9th century. VI. Carved ivory panel; Carolingian, 9th century, with photograph of the companion panel at Frankfort. VII. Carved ivory casket with intarsia ; 12th century. VIII. Carved ivory panels ; Byzantine, nth—12th century. IX. Carved ivory diptych ; French, 14th century. X. Ivory carvings; French, 14th century. XI. Carved ivory group ; Spanish, 16th century. XII. Roman enamel ; 3rd century. XIII. Enamelled fragments ; Limoges, 12th century. XIV. Enamelled end of a reliquary; Limoges, 13th century. XV. Enamelled panel from a bookcover; Limoges, 13th century. XVI. Enamelled plaques of a bookcover ; Limoges, 13th century. XVII. Casket with embossed silver and enamels ; Rhenish, 12th century. XVIII. Enamelled ciborium ; Limoges, 14th century. XIX. Enamelled brass candlestick ; English, 17th century. XX. Enamelled chalice; Italian, late 14th century. XXI. Painted enamel, The Adoration of the Magi; Limoges, 16th century. XXII. Painted enamels ; Limoges, 16th century. XXIII. Painted enamels; Limoges, 15th and 16th centuries. XXIV. Enamelled ciborium ; Venetian, 16th century. XXV. Painting under glass ; Italian, 14th century. XXVI. Bronze censer; 16th century. XXVII. Jade vases; Chinese, 18th century. INTRODUCTION THAT part of Mr McClean's Bequest described in this Cata- logue, though not of great extent, is yet an acquisition of exceptional importance to the University. It contains classes of objects hitherto almost unrepresented in the Fitzwilliam Museum, and rapidly growing so rare that the hope of acquiring them through ordinary channels becomes every year more and more remote. They are the things for which collectors most obstinately compete; they belong to a very restricted group, of which the conspicuous members have been preserved for centuries in sacristies, or have passed in recent times into great permanent collections. The church treasuries, the museums, and the cabinets of wealthy amateurs have between them almost exhausted the visible sources of supply. The finer products of mediaeval handicraft, if they appear at all in the sale-rooms, change hands upon terms which would have seemed incredible to the collectors of fifty years ago. There are many reasons why mediaeval objects should have thus appreciated in value. Their total number is relatively small, and is not likely to be increased by discovery: in this province great surprises are improbable. The places where the more important works of art are preserved are known ; even the typical examples of no more than average merit have almost all emerged from obscurity into positions of comparative prominence. It is not with these things as with Egyptian, or classical, or barbaric antiquities, the sum of which may at any moment be notably increased by the discovery of new tombs or cemeteries. They belong to the Christian epoch; and Christianity, by abolishing the custom of burying valuable possessions with the dead, deprived archaeology of a resource consistently available in the case of earlier periods. D. I 2 INTRODUCTION A few tombs of princes temporal or spiritual have preserved for us the insignia which distinguished great personages during life; but these are the exceptions to an irrevocable sumptuary law applied not to the living but to the dead. Christian antiquities of small proportions have therefore suffered more from the vicissitudes of time than those of preceding ages: their brief existence has been more exposed to the chances of destruction. Unprotected by con- cealment in the earth from the demands of greed or necessity, not always safe even within the walls of the sanctuary, they were already a residue long before the days of the museum or the collector. Such antiquities are, as Bacon has said, "tanquam tabula naufragii,—scattered wreckage to be saved and recovered from the deluge of time." The perusal of mediaeval inventories makes it only too clear that not a tithe of the treasures which once existed has survived to excite the cupidity of our day. In the centuries before banking works of art were realisable capital, and, if composed of precious metals, were too often converted into money by the agency of the melting-pot. Wars and revolutions, or outbreaks of religious fanaticism, multiplied risks for all things of high intrinsic value; the indifference of the Renaissance for mediaeval art, and the carelessness or ignorance of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, united to reduce yet further a long diminished total.