Ivory Pyx (Box) (500s): Art, History and Details

Ivory Pyx (Box) (500s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Elaborately carved from a section of an elephant’s tusk, this ivory pyx (Greek for "box") depicts a number of New Testament scenes, namely the Annunciation, Christ’s entry into Jerusalem, Christ raising Lazarus, and Christ healing the blind man. It also depicts a Christian altar with chalices, possibly indicating the box’s use in a liturgical context.

Object facts

• Title: Ivory Pyx (Box)
• Date: 500s
• Culture: Byzantium
• Type: Ivory
• Technique: ivory
• Dimensions: Diameter: 12.7 cm (5 in.); Overall: 8.5 cm (3 3/8 in.)
• Collection: MED - Byzantine
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1951.114

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Milliken, William M. “A Byzantine Ivory of the Early Christian Period.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 38, no. 10 (December 1951): 227–229.
• Milliken, William M. “The Completed Ivory Pyxis.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 39, no. 4 (April 1952): 63–64.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.