Page 188 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

the saltcellars; the transverse reliefs dividing the 7^_
surface of the oliphants into registers are particu- Benin have two spherical containers, one atop the
larly analogous to the horizontal bands carved into SALTCELLAR other, divided exactly in half, so that the complete
the pilasters and capitals of many early sixteenth- saltcellar is composed of three parts: a base with
century Portuguese monumental buildings, such i6th century the lower half of the first container, a middle sec-
as the monastery of Los Jeronimos in Lisbon. Bini-Portuguese style, Nigeria tion comprising the upper half of the first con-
ivory
The coats of arms of the House of Aviz, the tainer and the lower half of the second, and, in the
armillary sphere, and the cross, symbol of the 2C).2 (llV2) Dark 1973; London 1980; Mendes Pinto few surviving complete pieces, a third part, which
references:
Order of Christ, all attributes of King Manuel i of 1983; Voge.11985; Bassani and Fagg 1988 serves as the lid of the second container, usually
Portugal, are carved, sometimes by themselves topped by a group sculpted in the round. In each
but more often together, on almost all of the The Trustees of the British Museum, London case a frieze of figures in European clothes —
oliphants and on two saltcellars. standing in five of the saltcellars and mounted on
Three oliphants and a powder flask made from a This saltcellar from the Museum of Mankind horseback in the other ten — encircles the base.
fragment of a fourth horn (Bassani and Fagg 1988, in London belongs to a group of fifteen Bini- The saltcellar exhibited here belongs to the type
nos. 75-77, 79) have carving showing the coat of Portuguese examples, most of which are incom- with standing figures and is the work of an artist
arms of Portugal, as well as those of Ferdinand v plete (Bassani and Fagg 1988, nos. 114-128). who, on the basis of this work, may be called
of Aragon and Isabella of Castile and the motto of Unlike the Sapi-Portuguese saltcellars, those from the "Master of the Heraldic Ship." He also carved
the Spanish king "Tanto Monta" ("it amounts to
the same thing/' thought to refer to a remark
made by Alexander the Great in cutting the Gor-
dian knot). It is likely that Manuel i of Portugal,
who had married in succession two daughters of
the Catholic monarchs (in 1497 Isabella and in
1500, after her death, Maria), presented his
father-in-law with these hunting horns created by
an artist from Sierra Leone. The inscription Ave
Maria carved on a transverse band of the oli-
phants could refer to the name of Manuel's second
wife. The coat of arms of Ferdinand and Isabella
also contains a pomegranate, the emblem of Gra-
nada, the kingdom in southern Spain that was
liberated from the Moors in 1492; thus these
works can be dated between 1492 and 1516, the
year of King Ferdinand's death.
On the oliphant exhibited, the coat of arms of
the reigning house of Portugal is shown hanging
from the limbs of a leafy tree, flanked by two uni-
corns, a motif identical to that appearing in the
device of the French printer Thielman Kerver,
active in the last decade of the fifteenth century,
whose shop was styled "at the sign of the unicorn/'
All the European iconographical elements that
we have identified in the Sapi-Portuguese ivories
can be dated more or less between the last quarter
of the fifteenth century and the first quarter of
the sixteenth, allowing us to conclude that these
works were carved in a relatively brief period by
a small group of artists who worked for the export
market as well as for African purchasers. This
is confirmed by the oliphant in the Musee de
l'Homme in Paris (Bassani and Fagg 1988, no.
201), which has a side mouthpiece and no rings
for attaching a supporting cord — a typically Afri-
can instrument. Careful comparison shows that it
was carved by the same artist who executed the
saltcellars now in the Museum fur Volkerkunde
in Vienna and the Bowes Museum in Barnard
Castle (Bassani and Fagg 1988, nos. 16-17). E B
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EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD 187