Diptych

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Consular diptych of Manlius Boethius , 487 AD

As a diptych ( plural diptychs , diptychs ; from ancient Greek δίπτυχος díptychos “double folded”) two-part relief panels or paintings are referred to, which are usually connected with hinges to open.

Late antiquity

Diptychs were originally paired writing tablets made of wood or metal, whose recessed inner surfaces were covered with a layer of wax and could be written on with a metal pen. Held together with straps or rings, the contents were protected by folding.

Especially valuable are those of late antique consuls ( " Konsulardiptychen gave away") and other dignitaries diptychs of ivory that have obtained from the 4th to 6th century. The representations on their outsides relate to the occasion (turn of the year, taking office, etc.). Some imperial diptychs consist of halves each composed of five ivory plates.

middle Ages

Ivory diptych from Genoels-Elderen, 9th century, left half
Ivory diptych from Genoels-Elderen, 9th century, right half

Some of these reliefs have been preserved because they were reused in the Middle Ages, but they were no longer used as writing boards, but as book covers or covers for lists of the living and the dead, who were to be particularly commemorated in worship (see diptych in the liturgy ). Byzantine and Western Roman ivory reliefs of this kind are likely to have been in the possession of Charlemagne , as can be seen from the style of ivory work from Charlemagne's court school . Such works were imitated from the Carolingian to the Romanesque period.

Mary crowned by angels and crucifixion (ivory relief, Paris, late 14th century; Bonnefantenmuseum Maastricht)

After the art of ivory relief had turned away from the rectangular cut of the classic writing boards in the Ottonian period, the diptych format was revived in this branch of relief art in the Gothic . Paris workshops of the late 13th century produced these double tablets in large quantities until the 15th century. On the inside, their pictorial schemes show partly full-area individual representations, partly structured field divisions with scenic sequences: Passion tales and mariological themes predominate and refer to the devotional character of the small works of art used as domestic and travel altars. The German, Italian and English imitations do not come close to their high artistic level.

Painted diptychs

At the same time as these Gothic ivory diptychs, painted diptychs appear for the first time in Italy. In the early 14th century Germany followed, later also France and the Netherlands. The outside of a diptych can also be painted. Its role as a private object of devotion meant that in the late Middle Ages the donors or clients had themselves depicted on one half of the pair of images in the gesture of veneration of a representation placed opposite. From there it was not far to the purely profane diptych type with a double portrait, as it often occurs on the occasion of engagements or weddings in the decades around 1500. Where it loses the mechanical connection, the small format, the private character and becomes two individual, albeit corresponding, representative panel paintings, the term diptych is no longer appropriate.

Example of a devotional image diptych

Wilton Diptych (around 1395, National Gallery London)

  

Example of a secular diptych

Hans Holbein the Younger (1516, Kunstmuseum Basel )

Famous diptychs

Unified by Lotte Brand Philips research since 1978: Albrecht Dürer's parents. (Photomontage)

See also

literature

  • Lexicon entry: Diptychon. In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages. Volume 3. Munich 1986, column 1102/1103.
  • Wolfgang Kermer : Studies on the Diptych in Sacred Painting: From the Beginnings to the Middle of the Sixteenth Century. With a catalog . Doctoral thesis University of Tübingen 1966. Stehle, Düsseldorf 1967.
  • John Oliver Hand, Catherine A. Metzger, Ron Spronk: Grace and devotion: the diptych in the age of Jan van Eyck, Hans Memling and Rogier van der Weyden. Belser, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 3-7630-2473-5 .

Web links

Commons : Diptychs  - Pictures and Media Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Richard Delbrück: The Consular Diptychs and Related Monuments: Studies on Late Antique Art History II. Berlin 1929.
  2. ^ Hermann Schnitzler: The ivory works of the court school , in: Karl der Große, catalog for the Aachen exhibition 1965, pp. 309–347, here p. 320.
  3. ↑ Raymond Koechlin : Les Ivoire gothiques français. 2 volumes. Paris 1924, p. ?? (French; full text on gallica.bnf.fr ).