Cleveland Museum of Art

Plaque from a Portable Altar Showing Christ and the Apostles

Date

1050–1100

Medium

walrus ivory

Culture

Germany, Lower Rhine Valley, Romanesque period, 11th century

Department

Medieval Art

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

This intricately carved ivory panel once decorated the side of a portable altar. One of three plaques, it depicts Christ's apostles and was one of the first major acquisitions of William M. Milliken, the museum's first curator of decorative arts and later director (1930–1958). As Milliken later recalled, the pieces "were immensely intriguing, monumental in scale, even if tiny in size, the Christ in the mandorla could have been enlarged and would have graced the tympanum of a great cathedral."

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