Gothic Ivories Project | Painted crozier (crosse); known as the Crozier of Bishop Malavolti (Side)

Baptism of Christ with saint John the Baptist and an angel; dragon head.
Painted knop with four saints in busts: saint Victor, saint Ansanus, saint Crescentius, saint Savinus. Bishop with mitre, book and crozier.
Foliated decoration. Monster swallowing the base of the volute.
Painted inscription: 'EGO A TE DEBEO BAPTIZARI ET TU VENI'.

Gaborit-Chopin 1978: Italy, 2nd quarter of the 14th century.
Carli 1979: Carli 1979: Siena, 2nd half of the 14th century (?).
Carli 1989: Siena, c. 1350.
Torriti 2000: mid-14th century.

Attribution
Unknown

Polychromy - Gilding
Extensive gilding and polychromy: blue, red and gold (foliated decoration), blue (arches around the knop), red (dragons' mouths, tongue and ears; sun, inscription, flourishing, robe of some apostles), green (water), gold, black and red (inscription), gold (bishop figure, hair, apostle's cloaks).
Painted inscription: 'EGO TE DEBEO BAPTIZARI ET TU VENI'.

Reverse
Carved on both sides.

Object Condition
Missing: upper part of the figure of saint John the Baptist (including his head and right arm).

Provenance
Said to have belonged to Donosdeo Malavolti, bishop of Siena (1316-1350).

Bibliography
V. Luisini, Il Duomo di Siena (Siena, 1911), pp. 138-139, 329.
M. Longhurst, Catalogue of Carvings in Ivory, Victoria and Albert Museum, 2 vols (London, 1927 and 1929), II (1929), pp. 59-60.
P. B. Cott, Siculo-Arabic Ivories (Princeton, 1939), pl. 64, no. 180.
D. Gaborit-Chopin, Ivoires du Moyen Age (Freiburg, 1978), ill. on p. 162, no. and fig. 252.
E. Carli, Il Duomo di Siena (Genoa, 1979), p. 160.
E. Carli, Il Museo dell'Opera del Duomo (Siena, 1989), p. 47.
Fioritura tardo gotica nelle Marche, ed. by P. Dal Poggetto, exhibition catalogue, Urbino, Palazzo Ducale, 25 July - 25 October 1998, p. 109.
P. Torriti, Tutta Siena contrada per contrada (Florence, 2000), pp. 30-31, p. 141.
Bastoni: materia, arte, potere, ed. by A. Gerardi, R. Traballesi, A. Zina, exhibition catalogue, Siena, Complesso museale di Santa Maria della Scala, 16 June-26 August 2006.
P. Williamson and G. Davies, Medieval Ivory Carvings 1200-1550 (London, 2014), in relation to no. 152.

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