Wording the Crucifixion: Art, Inscriptions and Polemics of Two Romanesque Ivory Crosses

Stunningly detailed online lecture from the London Art History Society on two ivory Romanesque crosses.

Sandy Heslop from University of East Anglia took us through the iconography of the Gunhild Cross from about 1100 now in Copenhagen and the Cloister Cross from 1180 now in New York. He described then in detail with particular reference to the inscriptions on them and great illustrations. I hadn’t known either piece before and was fascinated by the detail of them.

He went to speculate convincingly on whether a Christ figure now in Oslo was originally from the Closter Cross linking it’s style to a roundel of the Deposition of Christ on cross.

He then looked at where and who each cross might have been made for drawing the conclusion that the maker of the latter cross may have known the earlier piece or at least come from the same tradition of art in Saxony under Henry the Lion. I was interested in the links he made to the anti-Semitism of the time of the First Crusade and the figures of Synagoga on both works.

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