Hi. I'm Naomi Speakman, Curator of Late
Medieval Europe, and welcome to my corner. [Music]
Today we are going to explore some playful objects from the collection.
These two caskets were designed to entertain
and they epitomised the medieval art of storytelling.
Something we can't do ¬– obviously – in the galleries is turn objects around and
look at them on all their sides. But, that's exactly what these caskets invite
us to do. They're made of elephant ivory which was
a particularly popular material for luxury carvings in medieval Europe from
the 13th to the 15th centuries. Over 5,000 carvings in this material
survive today and we know them as gothic Ivories.
Paris was one of the centres, if not the major centre, for carving in this
material. Those workshops flourished during the late 1200s and the 1300s.
A whole host of objects were made in this material from statutes of the
virgin child to multi-panelled plaques decorated with religious scenes,
to more secular objects such as mirror cases and combs.
Many were, and are very detailed, such as these two caskets.
These both draw their imagery from contemporary literature.
What did they actually hold? Well, we don't know for certain.
Some people say jewellery for the larger ones. It's also been
argued that they may have held documents. What were they given for? Well, it's also
been argued that they were perhaps love gifts or to mark a marriage.
Of the caskets that survive, the largest number are known as composite caskets
and they're like the one I have here. And they show a range of different
scenes. This one measures about 21 centimetres
in width and it dates from the second quarter of the 14th century. By that I
mean from about 1325 to 1350. Let's start on the lids where a lot of
activity is taking place. At the centre,
two knights are in the middle of a joust. You can see they are sitting on their
horse. They are fully armoured. Their male shirts are visible. They have their
leg guards on and their horses are thundering towards
each other. They are mere millimetres away from impact.
Both are holding their lances aloft and the tips of them are about to strike
both knights’ helmets. These knights also have crests on top of
their helmets. For the one on the left there's a very distinct bird
and for the one on the right there's either a fanned plant or a cox comb.
This central image presents us with the idea of a cacophony
of sound, and it's quite easy to see why. The
horses are galloping on uneven ground. There are two
quite precariously placed heralds seated in the trees and they are blowing their
trumpets. Above, there is a balcony and there are
six people standing on it. Their gestures and the way that their
bodies move show us that they are all talking animatedly.
Perhaps, they're even debating about whose knight is going to win.
On the edges of this scene something else is taking place. One knight is
loading up a crossbow. Another is filling up and preparing a
catapult. On the other side,
a knight kneels before a lady holding a large key,
and another knight is climbing this almost twisted rope-like
ladder. But look again, and everything is not as it seems.
That knight with the crossbow is not about to shoot an arrow but a bunch of
flowers. The catapult is about to send a basket
of roses flying through the air. And the people all at the top
are holding missiles. But they're not about to throw stones
down on their attackers, but they also are holding flowers. And in this top
corner there's a curious figure who is crowned.
He's winged and he's holding a bow and arrow.
So, what's going on here? Well, this is a scene known as the
'assault' or the 'attack on the castle of love'.
This was a chivalric allegory which was very popular at the time,
and it was meant to be humorous. So here, knights are
storming the castle of romance. Moving down onto the front of
the casket there are two different stories
shown in four scenes. We begin on the left,
and the characters here have some names that might be familiar to you. Aristotle,
that great classical scholar Alexander the Great, and Alexander's love who in
the medieval stories is known as Phyllis.
It begins in this panel on the end. Aristotle is seated
in front of his crowned pupil and he's telling Alexander to focus on
his studies and not be distracted by women, because Alexander is besotted with
Phyllis. But Phyllis decides to get her own back,
and that's what happens in the second scene.
Aristotle sees her and is overcome with lust.
So, she convinces him to let her put a horse's saddle and a
bridle on him and to ride him. And that's what's happening.
Here, Aristotle is on all fours and you can clearly see that he's wearing reigns.
Phyllis is sitting on his back and you can just make out underneath the lock
that she's also holding a whip in her other hand.
Looking on is Alexander the Great and he is this little head peeping out of the
tower. Here, he sees that his great tutor has
completely humiliated himself. There are lots of different themes at
play here - age versus youth, hypocrisy, the world turned upside down,
and quite simply a venerable scholar made to look ridiculous.
That theme of age continues on the rest of the front of the casket.
The other tale is that of the fountain of youth.
Here, a queue of elderly people are lining up
and they're eager to get into the curative waters of the fountain.
At the end of the casket, we see several bathing youths, rejuvenated, and they're
sitting in the waters. And the fountain almost looks like a hamburger. You can
see it just above them. Moving to the side,
this panel shows two different stories alongside each other.
On the left is the tragic love story of Tristan and Isolde. You might be
familiar with it. But if you're not, I’ll tell you briefly.
Tristan was a knight in the court of King Mark of Cornwall and Isolde was
the Irish princess who married Mark. The two strike up an adulterous relationship.
What's taking place here is in a wood. You can see that with the
tree. Tristan and Isolde are talking but
they're watched over by Mark. He's spying down on them from the top of
the tree. You can make out his face at the top.
Conveniently, they are seated in front of this pool of water.
So, they see mark's reflection and because of that they talk innocently so
as to convince Mark that there is nothing untoward going on.
One of my favourite things about this object is the way that Mark's reflection
is depicted because his head is shown as if it's literally coming out of
the water in 3D. On the other side of this panel is the
death of the unicorn. As medieval texts tell us, the only
person who can capture a unicorn is a virgin maiden because she's the only
person who is pure enough. And a unicorn will lie down in her lap.
Here, that's just what's happening. The unicorn is lying down in the maiden's
lap and it is being killed by a man who is
standing and stabbing it with a spear. For the medieval viewer, they would also
have understood the sexual connotations of this allegory.
The rest of the panels all tell stories of knights from Arthurian legends.
These are the knights of the round table from King Arthur's court.
Various knights are shown here performing different elements of their
stories. We begin
on the left with Gawain, and he's fighting a lion.
The next scene shows Lancelot. He's crawling on all fours across this
gigantic sword which is a bridge. He's walking over the rushing water
which you can see rippling beneath him. Above, swords and spears rain down on him.
As the story tells us, Lancelot crawled very carefully along this perilous
bridge trusting himself to God as he went.
In the next scene we have Gawain again. He's fully armed even though he's asleep
on this bed. Again, he is lying underneath a hail of
swords and spears, and in fact that element comes from Gawain’s story not
from Lancelot. Gawain is lying on quite an unusual bed.
At the bottom of it are bells and it's also on wheels.
On Gawain's shield is a lion's paw and quite a sad looking lion is also watching this
scene. In Gawain's story he is in an enchanted
castle and as he is told no one who spends the night on this bed has ever
survived to tell the tale. Well, during the night,
the arrows fall down on Gawain and he is attacked by a lion but he fights back
and survives the ordeal. He's watched on at the end of the panel
by the women of this enchanted castle. This final panel is the story of Galahad.
He's famous for his quest to find the Holy Grail.
Galahad has clearly just arrived because his horse is tethered to the tree. He's
standing before an older man who hands him a key.
This key represents the key to the castle of maidens. As Galahad’s story
tells us, on receiving this key he rescues the women trapped in the castle.
You might be wondering why this casket has so much going on and shows so many
different stories. Well, they might seem obscure or
difficult for us to understand, but actually, these were some of the most
popular stories for medieval audiences. So, you can think of this casket as
containing some of the big hitters from contemporary literature.
Well, that's quite a lot of information, so I think I’ll save the other casket
for the next episode. Join me next week.
[Music]