***Morgan Casket. Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1917. Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. It’s a very interesting piece, because it has an entirely medieval body—you could go down to the Byzantine department and see caskets of a very similar shape and kind—but the figures on the corners wear turbans and robes that are clearly Arab. When you look at the casket very closely, you see all kinds of fantastic beasts, evidence of a shared vocabulary between medieval Christian and Muslim imagery. You see that griffin there, whose wing turns into a bird’s head and whose tail turns into a kind of deer’s head? The furry one, with ears? He’s really an extraordinary character. But others are quite naturalistic. The ibex looks like the ibex we know. review from here high-res image
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***Morgan Casket. Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1917. Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

It’s a very interesting piece, because it has an entirely medieval body—you could go down to the Byzantine department and see caskets of a very similar shape and kind—but the figures on the corners wear turbans and robes that are clearly Arab.

When you look at the casket very closely, you see all kinds of fantastic beasts, evidence of a shared vocabulary between medieval Christian and Muslim imagery. You see that griffin there, whose wing turns into a bird’s head and whose tail turns into a kind of deer’s head? The furry one, with ears? He’s really an extraordinary character. But others are quite naturalistic. The ibex looks like the ibex we know.

review from here

high-res image

Source: theparisreview.org

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