Lot n° 28
Estimation :
30000 - 50000
EUR
Result with fees
Result
: 370 500EUR
Rare chess pawn, king, in walrus tusk carved in the round, b - Lot 28
Rare chess pawn, king, in walrus tusk carved in the round, beautiful brown patina.
Seated on a throne, the king is depicted in majesty, holding a sword flat on his knees with both hands. His head is crowned with a crown of flowers, and his hair is braided and falls to the nape of his neck and back. His face is oval, his round eyes wide open with a large pupil in the center; a beard with highly structured locks forms a collar around the lower jaw.
He wears a tunic and a cloak closed at the chest. Folds overlap in front of his legs and feet, forming geometric waves. The sword he holds is wrapped in its scabbard, encircled by a strap. The throne is particularly elaborate, with braiding on the right flank and moldings forming four frames on the left. At the back, the backrest is supported by two uprights in the shape of reptiles; it is carved with two uninterrupted registers of rich foliage, running from one register to the other; a large-bodied griffin forms the rounded top of the backrest, its paws curling into the upper register of foliage.
Norway, Trondheim, 13th century
H. 8.3 cm
(minor damage and missing parts)
Provenance :
French private collection
Norwegian chess pawn corpus
This king, the pawn of a chess set, is part of a corpus attributed to the production of Trondheim in Norway, the episcopal see from 1159. Here, table-makers worked on walrus tusks. Chess pieces have been found in archaeological finds.
Major international museums have chess pieces from these workshops in their collections. A king (fig. a) (inv. OA5541) in the Objets d'art department of the Louvre, dated circa 1200 and originally from Trondheim, and a bishop, equivalent to the modern bishop, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (inv. 17.190.229) (fig. b), dated circa 1150-1200, also from Norway. But above all, the most emblematic group of this production, well known and studied for many years, are the so-called Lewis figurines. In 1831, ninety-three objects were discovered in the Bay of Uig on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland. This collection comprises fifty-nine chess pieces, including eight kings (fig. c), eight queens, sixteen bishops, fifteen knights, twelve keepers and nineteen pawns. The set is now in the British Museum (inv. nos. 1831, 1101.78-145) and the National Museum of Scotland (inv. nos. H.NS.
19-29), where the Lewis treasure was exhibited from 1832 and 1888.
Since its discovery in the 19th century, this collection has become an essential reference for the production of the Trondheim workshops.
The presence on Scottish soil of Scandinavian pieces dating from the late 12th century may come as a surprise. The dynasty of the "Sea Kings" ruled the Hebrides from 1079 to 1265, and the Isle of Lewis belonged to the Manx kingdom. Norwegian sailors traded from the Baltic Sea to the entire Icelandic Sea basin. In the
In the 13th century, this maritime route led the Norwegian kingdom to make incursions into Scotland, and to settle there. Its armies occupied the Isle of Lewis for two summers, and trade treaties were signed with the Scots. Norwegian chess sets accompanied the troops and merchants. They may have remained on the island, whether sold or given to the Scots.
Stylistic analysis
A striking feature of the Lewis Treasure coins is the similarity of facial features from one figure to the next. This similarity undoubtedly allows attribution to the same sculptor, or at least to the same workshop. Spectrometric analysis of the faces carried out by the researchers led them to define five typological groups. With its oval face, straight beard and wide-open eyes with deep-set pupils and hemmed eyelids, our pawn belongs to group A.
The eight kings preserved in the British Museum are dressed in a mantle, with one flap folded back over the front to form regular pleats. Ours, on the other hand, wears an open cloak, revealing the tunic with its more architectural folds, in the manner of the ladies (fig. d), demonstrating the sculptor's freedom in creating the various pieces.
The back of the throne on which our king sits is comparable to several other decorative motifs of Scandinavian origin. The back of the bishop's throne (fig. e) at the MET is carved with intertwined tendrils, as is a walrus tusk piece from Trondheim, dated 1150- 1200, in the Danish National Museum (fig. f). The thrones of the kings and ladies in the Lewis treasure trove are similarly treated.
In each of these examples, a
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