An important carved ivory crucifix
Carved ivory, and palisander, walnut and ivory inlays on softwood. With a model of Christ crucified with four nails looking up towards the left. Mounted on a moulded cross set into a tiered base decorated with ivory inlay scrollwork and acanthus motifs. H 74.3, W 21, D 12.9 cm.
Franconia or Mainz, attributed to Heinrich Ludwig Rohde, 1725 – 30, the corpus presumably French, ca. 1700.
A comparable cross, albeit mounted on a cabinet, is housed in the collection of the Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn. Ludwig Baron Döry published it in the Bonn Yearbooks in 1966. He attributes it to a student of Ferdinand Plitzner, who died in March 1724, namely the Mainz cabinetmaker Heinrich Ludwig Rohde (1683 - 1755). He supplied the Electors Lothar Franz von Schönborn (1655 - 1729) and Philipp Karl von Eltz-Kempenich (1665 - 1743) with magnificent furniture inlaid in ivory.
Another important wood carver and cabinetmaker active in Mainz who used similar inlays was Johann Justus Schacht, whose impressive choir stalls from the secularized Carthusian monastery were sold to Trier Cathedral in 1787. The part of the choir stalls that did not fit in the Cathedral is housed today in The Metropolitan Museum of Art New York.
Provenance
South German Private collection.
Literature
Cf. the choir pews from Mainz Cathedral in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, acc. no. 52.120, and that in the western choir of Trier Cathedral. Cf. von Döry, Ein Kabinettschrank mit Elfenbeinkruzifixus im Rheinischen Landesmuseum, in: Bonner Jahrbücher, 166/1966, p. 454 ff. Cf. Zinnkann, Meisterstücke Mainzer Möbel des 18. Jahrhunderts, Frankfurt 1988, no. II and III, illus. 24 f.