Saint Paul

This ivory panel can be related to German works produced around the end of the 12th and the beginning of the 13th century. A small group of ivories, including a 'Flight into Egypt' in the Museo Nazionale in Florence, and a 'Tree of Jesse', now shared by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Louvre, possibly carved in Bamberg, provide some convincing parallels, especially interlaced branches of the trees beside St. Paul. Large-scale sculpture of the early 13th century provides some comparable works. It is not so much specific details that relate works but the spirit underlying them: the preaching St. Paul and the disputing prophets of the choir screen show a similar external expression, in their vitality and dynamism and in their swirling draperies, of the vehemence of their words. Compared with the solidity and dignity of the figures on the other ivories, this panel is clearly looking forward into the 13th century, nearer to the beginning of German Gothic sculpture, soon to emerge at Bamberg itself.