Elfenbeinsattel

The inside of the raised left scroll (the right one is lost) at the tip of the pommel of this ceremonial saddle is decorated with two angels bearing the crowned arms of the King of the Romans: the one-headed imperial eagle. On the front, below the pommel, is the letter E above a heart, probably a reference to the wife of the saddle’s original owner. The style of decoration, especially the clothes worn by the tiny figures, date the saddle to the second quarter of the fifteenth century. This means that Albert II, King of the Romans, is the only person for whom this saddle could have been made. Albert was elected King of the Romans in March 1438 and died in October 1439. He was married to Elisabeth of Luxembourg, the daughter of Emperor Sigismund, Albert’s predecessor on the imperial throne.

The outside of the saddle is painted blue and covered with a profusion of bone carvings that depict lovers, small figures in courtly attire, animals, and, on the seat, bows. Note also the (repaired) arms of Hungary and a dragon, presumably a reference to the Hungarian Order of the Dragon founded by Albert’s fatherin-law Sigismund in 1408 (see cat. 7). The arms are framed by the inscription wyl es got ych helf dir au[s] not (‘if it is God’s will then I will aid you in your distress’) above a depiction of St George killing the dragon.

The saddle was long housed in the imperial treasury in Vienna. In the 1731 inventory of the Small Secret Treasury, it is listed as a ‘wooden saddle in Muscovite style, covered all over with figures made of bone’ (ein hölzerner Moscovitischer sattl, über und über mit beinenen figuren geziert). The Imperial Armoury also houses a second late Gothic ivory saddle (c.1455) that had been made for Albert’s son, Ladislaus the Posthumous, King of Hungary and Bohemia (inv. A 64).