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Students in Prof. Jens Wollesen's course FAH 102 The Practice of Art History are required to write about one of several works in the Malcove Collection housed at the University of Toronto Art Centre.
Below are catalogue entries for these works from: Sheila D. Campbell (Ed.) The Malcove Collection: A catalogue of the objects in the Lillian Malcove Collection of the University of Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1985.
Note: To view comparative Malcove objects referred to in the texts below, click the "UTAC Collections Online" button at left. Enter the accession number into the Quick Search box and click enter. The accession numbers begin with "M." To view the whole Malcove Collection, enter the word "Malcove" into the Quick Search box and click enter. You may then browse the Malcove Collection in list view, lightbox view or by single item.
Malcove Catalogue entries
110 Censer
Bronze. 12 x 8 x 10 cm (handle)
Byzantine, 6th century
M82.404
This small free-standing censer has a handle which ends in a ram’s head. It is supported on three paw-shaped feet and has a plain shallow cylindrical base. The top is a dome shape with an openwork vine scroll motif. The openwork continues up to the knob finial. The style of this openwork is similar to that in catalogue 111 [M82.407] and the Dumbarton Oaks example quoted there, and so a sixth-century date is proposed here also.
Purchased from Blumka Gallery, New York, January 1967
SDC [Sheila D. Campbell]
Malcove catalogue page 84
120 Chancel screen
Marble. 78 x 91 x 13 cm
Byzantine, 5th / 6th century
M82.327
In the early Byzantine period large slabs of carved stone were erected in churches as a division between the chancel and the nave. For large, wide churches more than one slab would be needed, while in small churches or chapels one would be enough. The decoration on these screens could be either ornamental or symbolic and the slab might be carved on one or two sides. This slab is carved on one side only. The lower two-thirds is filled with two panels of meander pattern, both deeply cut. The upper third has a cross in a wreath flanked by vine leaves and grapes in one panel; the other has a cross in a scallop shell flanked by dove. The discolouration on the stone has been caused by prolonged contact with red earth.
Purchased from J.J. Klejman, September 1973
SDC [Sheila D. Campbell]
Malcove catalogue page 94
339 Virgin and Child, the martyrdom of St Lawrence
Gesso, tempera, gilt on wood.
34 x 16.5 x 2 cm
Venetian / Croatian, circa 1320
M82.119
On the left edge are two holes from fastenings for hinges and on the back are two flattened hooks. Therefore this panel was probably the right wing of a triptych. The panel is almost intact, but there is some serious paint loss on the right, and, on the lower border, a fragment missing from the lower right corner and worm holes on the left edge. The gesso on the front, applied in several layers, is approximately three mm thick and on the back is a very thin layer of gesso, painted a dark colour (green / black?). There is some in- painting around the lower legs of St Lawrence, the head and right shoulder of the kneeling figure, left foreground, plus a few small spots on the face of Mary and forehead of the child.
The front surface is divided into two equal panels, separated by a thick black line. In the upper half Mary, in a dark blue mantle, holds the reclining Christ Child, dressed in a red garment with gold highlights. In the upper corners are busts of saints Peter and Paul, while on the left is a figure of St Francis, bearing the signs of stigmata, and on the right just the nimbus and a fragment of the head of a second monk.
The lower half of the panel shows the martyrdom of St Lawrence, watched by the emperor whose canopied throne projects into the band separating the panels, and also by a group of soldiers and a tiny angel hovering in the upper right. St Lawrence was martyred by being roasted on a grid in Rome in 258 AD. His feast day is 10 August.
The panel has a gold background and the predominant colours are red and blue. In the upper panel a pale green has been used for the shading on the faces and hands of all five figures. The same colour is repeated in the lower panel both for shading on the exposed skin areas, but also for the area surrounding the scene of St Lawrence’s martyrdom.
The faces of the emperor, two of the soldiers, and the man with the spear all have deep small scratches across the nose or eyes, and since these are all ‘bad’ figures, this seems like intentional mutilation rather than mere coincidence.
For comparative dating, an icon of the Virgin and Child in the Tretyakov Gallery has similar delicate features of the face, shadows, long fingers, and fine gold lines on the drapery (D.T. Rice, Byzantine Icons, Faber Gallery of Oriental Art, New York nd, pl. 10).
publication
The panel has been published and illustrated in Leo S. Olschki, Italian Romanesque Panel Paintings, ed. B. Garrison (Florence 1947), where it is referred to as the Zara Madonna and linked to several other panels painted on the Dalmatian coast circa 1320. The others are now in the Hermitage Museum, Leningrad.
From the Minneapolis Institute of Arts Collection
Purchased from V.D. Spark, New York, January 1959
SDC [Sheila D. Campbell]
Malcove Catalogue, pages 245-6
353 Icon, Christ Pantocrator
Gesso, paint on wood.
58.5 x 35.2 x 3 cm
Greek, 17th century
M82.113
This icon of the Pantocrator shows more of the figure than catalogue 352 [M82.116], extending to half-length. He makes the sign of benediction with the right hand and holds a closed book in His left hand. He wears a dark brown chiton with touches of bright yellow and a blue himation with highlights in white and black. The background is divided into a rudimentary landscape and, by means of an inscription, Christ is identified as , the saviour. His expression is calm and thoughtful. The hair once again frames the face and extends onto the left shoulder. The painting of the face, neck, and hands has been done with large patches of off-white over dark brown, giving the illusion of a strong light emanating from Him. This technique also enhances the dark shadows under the eyebrows and makes the gaze intense but gentle. The comparative examples for dating in catalogue 352 [M82.116] may be applied here, although the provenance is quite different.
Purchased in Athens, 1964
SDC [Sheila D. Campbell]
Malcove catalogue page 259
419 Ivory panel, probably a diptych wing, with Crucifixion
Ivory. 12.9 x 8.2 cm
French (North), Rhine / Meuse region,
third quarter of 14th century
M82.202
The figures are set beneath an architectural canopy consisting of three trilobed arches surmounted by steep gables. There are foliate crockets and fleur-de-lys finials. A trefoil is carved on each gable and in each spandrel behind the gables, and there is a fine beading carved inside the top of the frame. This decoration can be matched on several ivories of the second half of the fourteenth century (Koechlin [cat. 418 [M82.201]], nos. 600 and 488, the latter reproduced without its gaudy polychromy by D. Gaborit-Chopin, Ivoires du Moyen Âge, Fribourg 1978, pp. 158, 210).
Beneath the canopy Christ hangs crucified. On his right the fainting Virgin is supported by three holy women. On his left stands St John the Evangelist, behind whom are three altercating Jews, two of them gesticulating towards the cross. Two of the Jews are capped, and one, a prophet, bears a scroll in his left hand. Over the heads of the women a half-length angel bears the symbol of the sun: on the right a similar angel is damaged, but would have born a symbol of the moon as commonly found in representations of the crucifixion. This iconography with four figures on each side of Christ is not unusual, and is one product of the tendency for ivories to become more crowded as the century progressed.
The Malcove panel can be compared with several others on stylistic grounds, exhibiting perhaps the closest relationship to a diptych wing with the crucifixion in the Musée de Cluny in Paris (Koechlin, no. 600). The drapery style of the two is virtually identical, and we note in particular the use of pronounced diagonal folds across the legs of the Virgin and the treatment of the mantle of St John. Other points of comparison are the facial characteristics of the Jews and of John, and the manner in which the torso of Christ is rendered, with its sharply tensed abdominal muscles. These two pieces, alike in their decorative detail, show considerable affinities with a diptych wing in the Louvre which Gaborit-Chopin has located to the region of France flanked by the Rhine and the Meuse. The workmanship of the Louvre panel is more refined, and the facial features are sharper, with noses more pointed, yet similarities of decoration, treatment of drapery, hair, female facial shape, and minor iconographic detail such as the Capuchin veil of the left female and the ankle-length gown of the right hand Jew suggest for our piece an origin in the same region as the Louvre panel.
The condition of the panel is fair; it is rubbed and the facial features of John and Christ are damaged. The damage to one angel has been noted. The frame is drilled on the right side for three hinges, with two holes, filled, to the front of the frame. On the left are five horizontal holes in the frame connected to horizontal grooves in the back, possibly for some sort of catch. There are four filled holes in the canopy, and a vertical crack from top to bottom is filled with filler in the upper part, and with ivory in the lower half.
Purchased from Georges Seligmann, New York, 1958
KMO [Kathleen Openshaw]
Malcove catalogue page 315
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