(upbeat piano music)
Female: We're in the British Museum looking at a
very large ivory panel.
Usually ivories are very small.
Male:This is huge and apparently it's actually
one half of a diptych.
Now what's interesting is even though it's
in the British Museum, it actually comes
originally from Constantinople.
This is a Byzantine object.
Female: It looks like the other half of a diptych
would have been on the left side.
The angel who's in this ivory and let me just say
this ivory is probably about what, 18 inches?
Male: Yes, I would say so. Probably by about
five and a half or six.
Female: Right. The other panel would have been
on the left and the Arch Angel, who we see,
seems to be looking in the direction of
what would have been the other
figure that would have been in the other panel.
Male: You can further tell that the panel
would have been on the left because you can see
you can actually see three holes that would have
been functioning as part of the hinge.
Female: Right and a diptych of course means
a work of art made out of two panels,
as opposed to a triptych which is three panels.
Male: We can assume that there would have been
another saint on the other side;
another angel perhaps.
Female: Another angel or perhaps the angel
giving this orb to a king or an emperor.
Male: We see Greek text up at the top and below
that we see this incredibly ornate arch
with a cross above that and the cross is
surmounting an orb.
There seems to be almost a kind of sunburst
behind it; very decorative, beautiful carving
of a kind of ribbon or banner just below the
wreath and then some broad open areas
under some dentils.
These are just architectural elements.
We see Corinthian plasters framing the figure.
Female: It actually reminded me of an apse
in a church with an archway behind and those
columns in maybe perhaps a kind of recessed space.
Male: Even though this is carved, it's such a
shallow relief carving; it's so flat.
You do get a sense of real architectural
space there and the figure himself is so
interesting because it's so classisizing
in some ways.
This is though very much a Byzantine rendering.
Look at the size of the Arch Angel in reationship
for instance to the staircase.
Female: He is very large. Is that what you mean?
He very much takes up that whole space as kind of a
hierarchy of scale so that his size matches
his divine nature.
Male: This is very interesting because this is
very classisizing.
Look at the drapery...
Female: Yes, that's very classical.
Male: That he wears.
Even up against the wings of; he's an angel,
he's an Arch Angel.
Female: He has his classical toga on.
Male: Yes and it's actually getting fairly late
to see that kind of synthesis, right?
Female: Even his hair, the curls in his hair
look like a Roman sculpture, Roman portrait bust.
Male: It's true.
If you stripped away the wings, if you stripped
away the cross and the orb, you could be looking
at a Roman portrait.
Female: The detail here in the carving is remarkable.
The lines that make up each of the feathers in the
angel's wings or the little circular swirling
decorations in his cuff to the delicacy of his
hand as he holds the staff, the other hand
holding the orb with a cross on it,
that symbol of power, but we know that
we're not in the classical world anymore
and the way that I know that is by
not only his size in relationship to the
architecture, but when I look down at his feet.
Male: How so?
Female: He doesn't really stand on the ground.
His feet sort of flatten out and hang over
those stairs.
He doesn't really make contact with the ground
in a meaningful way and that suggests to me
a weightlessness, a kind of spirituality that
reminds me of Byzantine and Medieval art.
Male:The handling of the body, which by the way
really is transparent behind the cloth,
the body really does swell that cloth.
It's not that later Medieval rejection
of the body below, but this is still coming
out of the classical.
Female: Look at his toes.
Male: They're great toes.
Female: Aren't they?
Male: They are great.
Female: I mean this is such a strange combination
of the spiritual and the human that is a very
funny moment in early Christian and
Byzantine art.
Male: There is a kind of awkwardness with the
synthesis; it hasn't been worked out yet.
Female: Right.
Male: It really is clash of traditions.
Female: Of Pagan and Christian.
Male: Absolutely.
(upbeat piano music)