EARLY MEDIEVAL MOUNT

900

Cast copper-alloy mount showing the figures of two men, dressed in long robes, their arms clasped around each other's upper bodies, their necks crossing. Their feet are raised, as if to trip each other, suggesting that they may be wrestling. The robes are elaborate and appear pleated with decorative edging. No belts or footwear are shown or suggested. Both men have strong features with the ears, noses, eyes and lips boldly defined. They are clean-shaven and their hair is shown combed back from the forehead and of shoulder length. The back of the mount is undecorated; it was originally smooth but has been damaged by corrosion. Width 31mm, height 29mm.This object appears Irish and the scene shown occurs in Irish art. I am indebted to Dr Niamh Whitfield and Mr Antony Dufort for their comments.The closest parallels to the scene on the mount are found on Irish high crosses, for example, the Market Cross at Kells, Co Meath, and the high cross at Durrow, Co Offaly, both dated to the late ninth or early tenth century. Henry shows a photograph of the former and a line drawing of the latter (1967, pl. 99 and fig. 38a, p. 200). On both crosses are a similar, though naked, pair, with superimposed feet as on this mount, though on the crosses the forefoot of one rests on the hind foot of the other. Françoise Henry identifies the scene as 'Jacob and the Angel'. Juxtaposed with the drawing of the Kells pair is Henry's fig 38b, which shows a similar scene on Notre-Dame-la-Grande, Poitiers. This is Romanesque, but one of Henry's points is that the iconography of Irish high crosses sometimes matches that of later Romanesque art. There is no exact match for the treatment of the drapery on the mount in an Irish context. However, similarly stylized pleats appear on the portrait of St John on fol. 208 of the St Gall Gospels, and the treatment of an unprovenanced openwork bronze crucifixion plaque in the National Museum of Ireland (Henry 1967, pl. 53), is similarly geometric. Moreover, there is a resemblance between the pleated gowns worn by the 'wrestlers' and that worn by Longinus (the soldier with the spear) shown on the Clonmacnoise crucifixion plaque, which dates to c.1000-1100.