#notalion

I heard you like elephants, so here's an elephant on an elephant (ivory) to make an oliphant...

I had a great time in the Victoria and Albert Museum's early medieval gallery the other day, looking at the ivories. There were so many fascinating pieces on display. One of the largest items was this oliphant, or ivory horn, made in the south of the Italian peninsula about 1000 years ago.

Detail of an elephant, lion, antelope(?), birds, and other animals, V&A Sculpture Collection 7953-1862

The material is a testament to the long-distance ivory trade (or at least continued access to ivory). The design also shows how ideas-- and possibly people-- traveled. The style ivory carving (with delicate animals in framed compartments) is reminiscent of that found throughout the Islamic Mediterranean, from the Iberian Peninsula to Egypt. Indeed, some argue that this piece might have been made by ivory workers who moved from Egypt to southern Italy.

A lion in a fresco from a monastery in Burgos, Spain, ca. 1200. Medieval European depictions of lions are often not very accurate. This is not because medieval Europeans had no access to lions -- there were some lions in captivity in Europe at the time, and there were books circulating with accurate pictures of them. Rather, artists were likely not interested in depicting lions as they actually looked in favor of expressing a lesson or concept.

On the Twitter hashtag #notalion, medieval historians and aficionados share the most un-leonine lions from the Middle Ages.