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

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

The work and its context

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

These intricately carved ivory panels once decorated the sides of a portable altar. Three of the plaques, those depicting Christ in Majesty and his apostles, were the first major acquisition of William M. Milliken, the museum's first curator of decorative arts and later director (1930–58). They were purchased from Emile Rey, the New York partner of Arnold Seligmann, Rey and Company, who had been closely associated with J. P. Morgan, Henry Walters, and other important American collectors. The fourth plaque, depicting the Crucifixion, was donated by Arnold Seligmann, Rey and Company later the same year. As Milliken later recalled, the pieces Rey showed him "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. . . . These morse [that is, walrus] ivories overwhelmed me . . . Somehow they must come to Cleveland. How was the question. Yet they would and must."

Object facts

• Title: Plaque from a Portable Altar Showing the Crucifixion
• Date: 1050–1100
• Culture: Germany, Lower Rhine Valley, Romanesque period, 11th century
• Type: Ivory
• Technique: walrus ivory
• Dimensions: Overall: 5.1 x 9.6 cm (2 x 3 3/4 in.)
• Collection: MED - Romanesque
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1922.359

Collection credit

Gift of Arnold Seligmann, Rey and Company, Inc.

Further reading listed by the museum

• Milliken, William. "Plaques from a Portable Altar." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 21, no. m1 (January 1934): 3-6.
• Gertsman, Elina and Barbara H. Rosenwein. The Middle Ages in 50 Objects. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

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.