THE MURANO DIPTYCH. AN EARLY BYZANTINE IVORY BOOK COVER

The paper is dedicated to the ivory cover, commonly referred to in scholarship as the Murano diptych. The name, alluding to one of the Vene- tian islands, derives from an 18 th -century historic record attesting the presence of one of the sides of the cover in a Murano monastery. This part of the diptych was later brought to Ravenna and today is on display at the Ravenna National Museum. The fragments of the other side of the diptych are dispersed among various museum and library collections in Manchester, Paris, Berlin, and Saint Petersburg. Notwithstanding the scattered location of the ivory, it is possible to reconstruct its constituent elements and original decoration. Besides offering a detailed analysis of the surviving fragments, this paper focuses on the overall iconographic program and formal characteristics of the diptych, and studies its reliefs in light of late antique ivory carving and church decoration. It is argued that late antique ivories represent an important source of information concerning the use of apocryphal imagery in monumental art, enabling us to reconstruct the imagery of early Byzantine narrative cycles.