Crozier with Lamb of God

This crozier is typical of a group of painted and gilded episcopal or monastic staffs that were probably produced in the Veneto or Central Italy during the mid- to late fourteenth century. Assembled from pre-fabricated segments of either animal bone or ivory, this pieced approach to construction anticipates Embriachi and other bone-carving workshops active in the Veneto during the late fourteenth century.

Most Italian bone croziers have a single beveled volute terminating in an open-mouthed dragon-like beast with serrated teeth, long red tongues, and pointed ears. The volute of The Met’s crozier emerges from the toothless, fleshy jaws of a second, larger creature with long, carved ears and painted gills. Thirteen curved pieces of bone interspersed with smaller fragments form the volute. The distinctive, curved join between the vertical dragon-headed segment and the first segment of the volute resembles other examples, including those in the Museo Nazionale del Bargello in Florence (inv. no. 4 Avori) and the Museo dell'Opera della Metropolitana in Siena (inv. no. OA/3063). The serrated, leaf-like crockets attached to their volutes are carved from flat pieces of bone and painted with stylized, lobed flowers emerging from curving stems. The straight edges and drilled circles on the lower four crockets of The Met’s crozier are almost identical to those of another example in Siena (inv. no. OA/3062).

While the bone croziers’ painted decorations and inscriptions adhere to a predictable color palette of red, black, and gold, the visual fields within their volutes vary and are either fitted with bone or ivory figures, of which some were repaired or replaced at a later date. The center of The Met’s crozier head retains its original figure: a double-sided lamb with a stylized mane who turns back to regard the long, slithering tongue of the beast behind it. The lower half of the long staff held between the lamb’s front hooves is carved from the same piece of bone as the lamb’s lower body, while its head and halo were carved separately. A serrated decorative element, partially carved on each of these two bone segments, stabilizes the lamb’s body against the interior of the volute. The upper half of the lamb’s staff, which is topped with a red and gold cross, was carved from a third piece of bone and attached to the volute at a different angle. A fourth bone panel with serrated and punched edges defines the ground beneath the lamb’s feet.

The craftsperson or workshop seems to have taken inspiration from earlier ivory croziers from southern Italy, which usually feature lambs, lions, and other creatures within a serpent-headed crook. An Agnus Dei nearly identical to that of The Met’s crozier occupies the volute of a contemporaneous bone example from the Benedictine convent of Nonnberg in Salzburg. These creatures almost certainly refer to the Lamb of God, a common proxy for the Resurrected Jesus (see also acc. no. 17.190.223). Although the central figure on a related bone crozier head in the Musée du Louvre in Paris is now lost, the inscription on the volute identifies the same subject matter: "ECCE AG[N]US DEI ECCE QUI TOLIS PE[CATA MUND]I" (inv. no. OA 12319).

Painted on either side of the volute of The Met’s crozier, an abbreviated Latin inscription corresponds to the angel Gabriel’s greeting to Mary during the Annunciation: "Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord [is] with you having been blessed" (Luke 1:28). Known today as the first lines of a prayer known as the Hail Mary, Gabriel’s speech famously announced the miracle in which Jesus, the Son of God, became incarnate in Mary’s virgin womb. Marian imagery and inscriptions are common on fourteenth-century Italian croziers. Examples in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (inv. no. A.547&A-1910) and the Bargello (inv. no. 13 Avori) the inscribed volute encircles an Adoration of the Magi, while examples from Siena (inv. no. OA/3062) and the Bargello (inv. no. 4 Avori) feature Annunciation imagery. Gabriel’s speech is also inscribed on several examples, including those in the Bargello and at Nonnberg.

Six rectangular bone panels with pointed Gothic arches encircle the base of the crozier head, creating a colonnade under which stand four painted and gilded male saints. Flowering plants inhabit the other two panels. While the figures on The Met’s crozier could reasonably be identified as the four Evangelists, scientific analysis of the faded paint might reveal attributes and other identifying features.

Interlocking pieces of bone comprise each of the shaft’s three sections. The threaded ends of each section would have facilitated disassembly and storage, but the shaft was damaged and repaired at some point and can no longer be separated. A fourth section may be lost. The joins of each section were turned on a lathe, and several segments retain faint traces of red paint. The bottom segment of the shaft is tapered, and its turned details complement bands of red as well as an encircling motif of red triangles.

This bone crozier was erroneously catalogued and published as ivory until it was analyzed by conservator Pete Dandridge in 2012. At that time, Dandridge identified at least three separate restorations to the crozier’s paint. The crozier had been conserved in 1954, whereupon ivory dowels were added in order to reattach some of the applied elements.

Long attributed to a northern Italian workshop active in the early fourteenth century, The Met’s crozier can be more carefully localized through the provenance history and recent scholarship on the above-mentioned croziers. According to legend, Abbess Gertrude of Nonnberg was granted a crozier in 1242, but scholars agree that the style of the convent’s bone crozier is later. The Bargello’s crozier (inv. no. 4 Avori) bears a modern inscription associating it Jacopo Altoviti, bishop of Fiesole (1390–1408) as well as the Altoviti coat of arms (Bargello 2018). Acknowledging resonances between the combatant animal iconography and polychromy and the so-called Siculo-Arabic ivories from twelfth- and thirteenth-century Southern Italy, Cott dated the related crozier group between the mid-thirteenth and the mid-fourteenth centuries and localized them to northern Italy. Most recently, Benedetta Chiesi likened similar crockets on the Bargello crozier to Venetian architecture (Bargello 2018).

Further Reading:

Ilaria Ciseri, ed, Gli avori del Museo Nazionale del Bargello (Milan: Officina Libraria, 2018), cat. VIII.38, pp. 278–282. Catalogue entry by Benedetta Chiesi.

Perry Blythe Cott, "Siculo-Arabic Crosiers and Painted Ivories of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries," Chapter 3 in Siculo-Arabic Ivories (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1939), pp. 20–24.


Catalogue Entry by Nicole D. Pulichene, Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial and Research Collections Specialist, Department of Medieval Art and The Cloisters, 2020–2022.

Inscription: (side A): Ave mA […] . G […] m dom[i]n […] T […] m . Be […] [should be Ave Maria gratia plena dominus tecum beata] (Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord [is] with you having been blessed [Luke 1:28]).

(side B): Ave . mARiA . G […] dominuS Tecum . BeA […] [should be Ave Maria gratia plena dominus tecum beata] (Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord [is] with you having been blessed [Luke 1:28])

[ Theodor Fischer, Lucerne (sold 1953)]

Rorimer, James J. "Acquisitions for the Cloisters." The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, n.s., 11, no. 10 (June 1953). p. 279.

Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Eighty-Fourth Annual Report of the Trustees for the Fiscal Year 1953." The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, n.s., 13, no. 1 (Summer 1954). p. 21.

Philippowich, Eugen von. Elfenbein: ein Handbuch für Sammler und Liebhaber. Braunschweig: Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1961. pp. 230–31, fig. 171.

Philippowich, Eugen von. Elfenbein: ein Handbuch für Sammler und Liebhaber. Bibliothek für Kunst- und Antiquitätenfreunde, Vol. 17. 2nd ed. Munich: Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1982. pp. 308–9, fig. 260.

Frazer, Margaret English. "Medieval Church Treasuries." The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, n.s., 43, no. 3 (Winter 1985-1986). pp. 34, 37, fig. 41.

Martini, Luciana, and Clementina Rizzardi, ed. Avori bizantini e medievali nel Museo nazionale di Ravenna. Ravenna: Museo Nazionale di Ravenna, 1990. p. 84.

Avril, François, ed. Bologne et le pontifical d'Autun: Chef-d'oeuvre inconnu du premier Trecento, 1330-1340. Autun: Musée Rolin, 2012. pp. 150, 153, fig. 3.