Portable Altar (c. 1200–1220): Art, History and Details

Portable Altar (c. 1200–1220) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

The principal decoration of this portable altar is carved of walrus ivory. On the long sides are traditional figures of standing apostles. On the short sides are the seated Virgin with the Magi, and Christ the Judge between the symbols of the Evangelists. The commercial ties between the Rhineland and the Norse peninsula made walrus ivory easily available to the city of Cologne, one of the most important artistic centers in medieval Germany.

Object facts

• Title: Portable Altar
• Date: c. 1200–1220
• Culture: Germany, Cologne
• Type: Ivory
• Technique: walrus ivory, gilded copper, porphyry, champlevé enamel, wood core
• Dimensions: Overall: 13.1 x 26.9 x 16.9 cm (5 3/16 x 10 9/16 x 6 5/8 in.)
• Collection: MED - Gothic
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1927.29

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Milliken, William M. (1927). "Two Medieval Objects from the Rhineland in the J. H. Wade Collection". The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, 14(4).
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1928.
• Winter, Patrick M. de. “The Sacral Treasure of the Guelphs.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 72, no. 1 (March 1985): 2–160.

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.