Plaque from a Portable Altar Showing Christ and the Apostles (1050–1100): Art, History and Details

Plaque from a Portable Altar Showing Christ and the Apostles (1050–1100) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This intricately carved ivory panel once decorated the side of a portable altar. One of three plaques, it depicts Christ's apostles and was one of the first major acquisitions of William M. Milliken, the museum's first curator of decorative arts and later director (1930–1958). As Milliken later recalled, the pieces "were immensely intriguing, monumental in scale, even if tiny in size, the Christ in the mandorla could have been enlarged and would have graced the tympanum of a great cathedral."

Object facts

• Title: Plaque from a Portable Altar Showing Christ and the Apostles
• Date: 1050–1100
• Culture: Germany, Lower Rhine Valley, Romanesque period, 11th century
• Type: Ivory
• Technique: walrus ivory
• Dimensions: Overall: 5.1 x 16.5 cm (2 x 6 1/2 in.)
• Collection: MED - Romanesque
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1922.307.c

Collection credit

Gift of J. H. Wade

Further reading listed by the museum

• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1925.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1928.
• Milliken, William. "Plaques from a Portable Altar." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 21, no. m1 (January 1934): 3-6.

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.