. Dinanderie; a history and description of mediæval art work in copper, brass and bronze . Fig. 13.—Boss of Viking Shield, Gothenburg without animals heads, we give a bronze boss of a Viking shieldin the Gothenburg Museum (Fig. 13). We have already spoken of the heads which Charlemagne 34 DINANDERIE had placed on the doors of Aix-la-Chapelle, and explained theprobable source of his inspiration, since those masks wereevidently intended to represent lions heads as they appear inmany Roman examples, though we find that a large number ofthe great heads which were placed on the church doors of thee
. Dinanderie; a history and description of mediæval art work in copper, brass and bronze . Fig. 13.—Boss of Viking Shield, Gothenburg without animals heads, we give a bronze boss of a Viking shieldin the Gothenburg Museum (Fig. 13). We have already spoken of the heads which Charlemagne 34 DINANDERIE had placed on the doors of Aix-la-Chapelle, and explained theprobable source of his inspiration, since those masks wereevidently intended to represent lions heads as they appear inmany Roman examples, though we find that a large number ofthe great heads which were placed on the church doors of theeleventh and twelfth centuries could never have been suggestedby these classic models. But we find in the zoomorphicterminations of the interlacing folds of Scandinavian bronzesremarkable dragon-like heads, and in all such decorative work. Fig. 14.—Head, Vold Borre, Norway a tendency to introduce grotesque faces, as well as thoseserpentine forms and heads, which were perhaps intended toconvey some religious symbolism. The skill with which theseNorthern artificers portrayed some of these heads shows boththeir cleverness in the treatment of the metal and the fertilityof their imaginations, since they could never have modelled fromlife such a creature as, for instance, that which appears on thegilt bronze ornament on a horse-collar which we reproducefrom Du Chaillu (Fig. 14). But more remarkable still is thegriffin-like head which formed part of the treasure found inthe Vimose bog, near Odense, in the island of Fyen, which THE ORIGINS 35 we here give (Fig. 15). A comparison of this with thecelebrated Durham Knocker (Fig. 16), and the similarmask on the door of the Cathedral of Le Puy (Fig. 17),compels the recognition of the Scandinavian rather than theclassic origin of these examples of Dinanderie. Indeed, Cahier,in his
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectmetalwork, bookyear19
