NYU IFA Medieval Art Forum – Paul Lott Lecture, Charles T. Little

The Metropolitan Museum of Art possess one of the largest collections of ivory carvings in the world, especially from the Middle Ages—more than five hundred works forming a continuous expression of artistic creativity from the late antique world until the Renaissance. One of the key building blocks of our image of the Carolingian world are the deluxe ivory carvings deployed for adornment in a variety of secular and sacred works. Exotic and treasured our reaction to these works is not conditioned by knowledge of artistic personality, but more by aesthetic response to form, composition, iconography, function and condition. The lecture looks at some critical and exquisite works—mostly in New York—that have been sometimes misunderstood, attempting to see them in a fresh light and as windows on an era of remarkable intellectual and artistic achievement.