The Siculo-Arabic Ivories and Their Spreading to al-Andalus

Abstract

From the mid-twelfth century to the first half of the thirteenth century, Norman Sicily was one of the main centres of ivory work activity in the Western Mediterranean. Its workshops specialized in the crafting of ivory objects painted in various typologies according to manufacture techniques, and they are a splendid specimen of medieval quantity production. The extensive range of these pieces indicates the development of an almost industrialized manufacture whose products massively expanded and circulated throughout the Mediterranean region during the Late Middle Ages. Early on, al-Andalus received copies bearing these characteristics through the art trade and, once the Norman workshops ceased to exist, kept painted ivory production alive during the Naṣrid period by establishing its own manufacturing techniques that assimilated the techniques from the island while creating a thematic repertoire and some clearly personal aesthetic models.