THE EMPEROR’S IVORIES

Sadly, the Collection of Sculpture and Decorative Arts is still closed for renovation and installation. At regular intervals, however, there are strong signs of life when the collection puts on a spectacular special exhibition assembled from its magnificent holdings. The shows are an attempt to make at least parts of the unique collection accessible to friends and patrons of our museum and to art-loving foreign visitors, as well as an endeavor to shorten the time until the long-awaited reopening of the whole collection.

After „Exotica“ (2000), „Glyptic Masterpieces“ (2002), tapestries depicting the Biblical story of Tobias (2004), „Masterpieces of the Collection” (2004) and “Giambologna” (2005), it is now the turn of one of the most fascinating, and one of the oldest, materials used for objects d’art – ivory, the mighty tusks of African and Indian elephants.

Size and wealth of the Museum’s ivory holdings and the objects’ outstanding quality make the collection one of the world’s greatest of its kind. It owes its existence to the refined taste and connoisseurship of the Emperors Rudolf II (reigned 1576-1612), Ferdinand III (reigned 1637-1657) and Leopold I (reigned 1658-1705), and of Archduke Leopold William, a seventeenth-century Habsburg Regent of the Netherlands.

The wealth and depth of the ivory holdings of the Collection and Sculpture and Decorative Arts and of the Ecclesiastical Treasury, which share a centuries-old common history, make it unnecessary to include loans in an exhibition that offers a profound survey of this type of small-scale Kunstkammer collectors’ piece.

During the Middle Ages, ivories generally served some kind of practical purpose or function, either in an ecclesiastical or a courtly context. However, during the Baroque period most ivory works were the result of a new interest in this exotic material that came to Europe via the sea routes and Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands or the cities of the Hanseatic League. By the late sixteenth century, ivory was the material of choice for wealthy collectors. Baroque ivory works combine the artist’s virtuoso skills with the sensuous surface texture of the exotic natural-object to create a precious collector’s piece born of the specific requirements of Kunstkammer collections. Both courtly and non-aristocratic collectors favoured small-scale objects d’art that require close inspection and careful scrutiny, that ask to be picked up, examined and touched to be fully appreciated.

Statuettes, reliefs, cups and vessels as well as turned objects made of the tusks of elephants were show-pieces that served no practical purpose but satisfied the highest artistic, technical, and material demands; they were primarily intended for the aesthetic enjoyment of refined connoisseurs.

The long and varied list of subjects includes stories from classical mythology as well as profane and religious topics. The consummate skill of the artists in rendering them dazzled all who saw them. By the middle of the eighteenth century, however, ivory was rapidly being supplanted by porcelain – the “white gold” – which was a much cheaper and less exclusive material for small statuettes.

From the beginning, the aura enjoyed by ivory was surely also fed by mythic ideas about the impressive elephants’ tusks that were regarded as powerful symbols of strength and authority. The use of ivory for worldly and ecclesiastical insignia was legitimized by the Old Testament’s description of Salomon’s throne as “made of ivory”. But the Physiologus, a celebrated book on the natural world by an unknown Greek author and the source for Christian animal fables, also helped define the importance of ivory for the Middle Ages. By 1200 narwhale tusk was equated with the horn of a unicorn.

Often shown with its head in Mary’s lap as a symbol of the Virgin Birth, unicorns were credited with immense healing powers which even the highest princes of the church did not want to do without: this precious natural object was believed to protect from all poisons, to offer help against illness and impotence, and even to serve as a guardian of chastity, which made it the most expensive medicine sold in pharmacies, who stocked in powdered form.

One thing that helped make ivory a decidedly courtly material was the fact that numerous princes and noblemen learned the art of turning ivory on a lathe, a skill that combined both relaxation and playful learning.

Scholarly concept and curatorial advisor:
Dr. Sabine Haag, Collection of Sculpture and Decorative Arts/Secular and Ecclesiastical Treasury