ARMENIA, PROBABLY 16TH CENTURY

Details

AN ARMENIAN GOLD REPOUSSÉ PANEL
ARMENIA, PROBABLY 16TH CENTURY
Of domical shape, with a flat rounded top, rising from a thin raised band, the image of Christ Pantocrator on the top, the register with twelve angels processing with liturgical objects between two altars with four columns supporting a canopy, six wafers decorated with crosses on each altar, under a row of four-winged cherubs, old knocks, in fitted box
3in. (7.6cm.) diam.

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Lot Essay

A number of similar canopied altars are found in mediaeval Armenian manuscripts. An illuminated page depicting Hannah sitting before Eli from a 17th century manuscript in the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem gives a close comparable to the present example (ms.501, f.4v., A. K. Sanjian, Armenian Art Treasures of Jerusalem, Oxford, 1980, p.113, fig.144). A gold repoussé pyx in the Gulbenkian Museum dated 1687, although octagonal, has a lid which is not dissimilar to ours for the fact that it is stepped and conceived in a circular design which is framed by a ring of four-winged cherubs (V. Nersessian, Treasures from the Ark, 1700 years of Armenian Christian Art, London, 2001, p.124, fig.34).

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