Reider table

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Reidersche Tafel ({{{artist}}})
Reider table
around 400
Ivory carving ,
18.7 cm × 11.5 cm × 0.6-0.7 cm
Bavarian National Museum ; Munich

The so-called Reidersche Tafel is one of the oldest known representations of the resurrection and ascension of Christ and at the same time the oldest exhibit that is on display in the Bavarian National Museum (inventory number MA 157). It is an ivory carving that was probably made in late antiquity around the year 400 in Rome or Milan. The panel was acquired for the museum in 1860 by the art collector Martin Joseph von Reider from Bamberg. It is exhibited in room 1 of the museum, which is dedicated to art from Late Antiquity to Romanesque .

Image description

The Reidersche Tafel can be read from the bottom right. There are three women on the edge of the picture who have pulled their Palla over their heads in public in the traditional Roman chastity gesture. These are the three holy women who visit Christ's tomb on Easter morning . On the left edge of the picture a seated figure in a toga is shown, who looks to the right at the women and greets them with a gesture of blessing . It is the angel who proclaims the resurrection of Christ to women. Above the angel, a building occupies the middle part of the left half of the picture. The lower storey is a square building with a two-wing gate, next to which a statue can be seen in a niche on the right. The upper floor is a tholos decorated with medallions . Contrary to the situation described in the Gospels, the building that represents the tomb of Christ is shown with the gate closed. A guard wearing a chlamys is leaning against the building from the left and right . While the guard on the left, armed with a spear, looks up in alarm, the one on the right has his head asleep on his supported arm.

Binding of the Gospel of Echternach

In the right half of the picture above the heads of the women, two men are depicted at the foot of a hill. The left of the two curves to the right and covers his head with both hands. The one on the right kneels in an ornamental position and looks up. These two figures are disciples of Christ. Another figure in toga with a nimbus around his head and a scroll in his hand rises above the two of them on the hill to the top right of the picture. This is the risen Christ. From a cloud the hand of God takes him by the hand and is about to pull him into heaven. The little tree growing up to the left of the grave is interpreted as a symbol of the Christian Church, in which Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians, like the two birds, find their spiritual nourishment in the branches.

Material and use

The Reider table is an ivory carving, on the left and right edges of which there are clear grooves that reveal the edges of the tusk from which the table was carved. The carving is mainly done as a bas-relief . In the area of ​​the grave architecture and the hand of the angel, however, the material is undercut. In the tree at the top left, the undercuts are so strong that the branches are partially detached from the background in the sense of the À jour technique.

Round holes can be seen at the four corners of the tablet, which show the original use of the Reider tablet. The ivory carving was probably embedded in the cover of a liturgical codex , as can be seen, for example, in the Codex aureus Epternacensis . In late antiquity, ivory reliefs were otherwise particularly common among consular diptychs .

Art historical importance

God gives the tablets of the law to Moses. Depiction in the Paris Psalter
Chapel of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem

The Reider tablet is an example of early Christian art as it developed in Italy in religious centers such as Rome and Milan. The imagery borrows heavily from antiquity, as can be seen in the clothing and gestures of the people portrayed. The figures are formally designed in line with Theodosian art. The pictorial design of the Easter miracle with the angel and the three women at the grave remained committed to this type until the high Middle Ages. In later centuries there are similar depictions of a man in a toga who has contact with a hand from heaven, in depictions of the handing over of the tablets of the law to Moses on Sinai, such as in the Paris Psalter .

Further art-historical significance can be seen in the panel insofar as it possibly provides a realistic picture of the burial chapel in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, consecrated in 335 . Also noteworthy is the depiction of the scroll that Christ carries in his hand, while the tablet itself was intended for the cover of a bound book. In this respect, the work of art marks a point in time when written texts experienced a media change. While papyrus scrolls were common in ancient times , codices written on parchment dominated in the Middle Ages .

Comparable ivory carvings in other museums and collections

literature

  • John Beckwith: Early Christian and Byzantine Art. Yale University Press, New Haven and London 1993, pp. 50-53.
  • Birgitt Borkopp: Rome and Byzantium. Treasury items from Bavarian collections. Catalog for the exhibition at the Bavarian National Museum in Munich, October 20, 1998 to February 14, 1999. Hirmer, Munich 1998, pp. 84–90.
  • Renate Eikelmann : The Bavarian National Museum 1855-2005. 150 years of collecting, researching, exhibiting. Hirmer, Munich 2006, pp. 216-218.
  • Fridolin Dreßler : Martin von Reider (1793–1862) and the transfer of his collections to the Bavarian National Museum in Munich (1859/60). In: Report of the Historical Association Bamberg. Vol. 122, 1986, pp. 29-71.
  • Ulrike Koenen: Research in an ivory tower? Questions about the topicality of traditional models of thought using the example of late antique and medieval ivory art. In: Communications on late ancient archeology and Byzantine art history. Volume 5, 2007, pp. 35-75.
  • Martina Pippal : Art of the Middle Ages. An introduction: From the beginnings of Christian art to the end of the High Middle Ages. 3. Edition. Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2010, pp. 75–76.
  • Götz Pochat: Virtual space concept and early medieval iconic. In: Elisabeth Vavra (Ed.): Virtual spaces: spatial perception and imagination in the Middle Ages. Files from the 10th Symposium of the Medievalist Association, Krems, 24. – 26. March 2003. Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2005, pp. 135–148, here: pp. 138–139.
  • Christa Schug-Wille: Byzantium and its world. Naturalis, Munich 1988, p. 59.
  • Werner Telesko : "Christ restitutor" - remarks on the iconography of the "Reider table". In: Pantheon. Volume 57, 1999, pp. 4-13.

Web links

Commons : Early Christian Ivory  - Collection of Pictures, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ cf. southern relief of the Theodosius obelisk
  2. ↑ One of the few older depictions of women at the grave can be found in the house church of Dura Europos, which was built around 232/233 AD
  3. ^ Kurt Weitzmann: Byzantine Liturgical Psalters and Gospels. Variorum reprints, London 1980, Figs. 15 and 16.
  4. ↑ cf. Gia Toussaint: Jerusalem - Imagination and Transfer of a Place. In: Bruno Reudenbach (Ed.): Jerusalem, you beautiful: ideas and images of a holy city. Lang, Bern 2008, pp. 51–52.