

The paintings generally had single subjects on a panel, the two matching, though by the 15th century one panel (usually the left one) might contain a portrait head of the owner or commissioner, with the Virgin or another religious subject on the other side. The ivories tended to have scenes in several registers (vertical layers) crowded with small figures. These suited the mobile lives of medieval elites. Although the triptych form was more common, there were also ivory diptychs with religious scenes carved in relief, a form found first in Byzantine art before becoming very popular in the Gothic period in the West, where they were mainly produced in Paris.
#Diptic perfume portable#
įrom the Middle Ages many panel paintings took the diptych form, as small portable works for personal use Eastern Orthodox ones may be called "travelling icons". The largest surviving Byzantine ivory panel (428 mm × 143 mm), is a leaf from a diptych in the Justinian court manner of c. Some of the most important surviving works of the Late Roman Empire are diptychs, of which some dozens survive, preserved in some instances by being reversed and re-used as book covers. Others may have been made to celebrate a wedding, or, perhaps like the Poet and Muse diptych at Monza, simply commissioned for private use.

In Late Antiquity, ivory notebook diptychs with covers carved in low relief on the outer faces were a significant art-form: the " consular diptych" was made to celebrate an individual's becoming Roman consul, when they seem to have been made in sets and distributed by the new consul to friends and followers. In medieval times, panels were often hinged so that they could be closed and the artworks protected. Diptych with the Coronation of the Virgin and the Last Judgment, Metropolitan Museum of ArtĪs an art term a diptych is an artwork consisting of two pieces or panels, that together create a singular art piece these can be attached together or presented adjoining each other.
