Poet and Muse diptych [SEP] material used
Poet and Muse diptych
The Poet and Muse diptych is a Late Antique ivory diptych that appears to commemorate, and to flatter, the literary pursuits of the aristocrat who commissioned it, so that it stands somewhat apart from the consular diptychs that were carved for distribution to friends and patrons when a man assumed the consular dignity during the later Roman Empire. The original inscription in this example, unusually, will have been carried out on the borders of the reverse side, which was infilled with a layer of wax for writing on
Lombards, but Theodelinda persuaded him and his son to convert to Catholicism in 603. Together they founded the cathedral at Monza, and endowed it with many treasures, a collection which has remained unusually intact, and includes the Iron Crown of Lombardy (strictly only on deposit there initially), the Late Antique Poet and Muse diptych, a Gospel book and the collection of ampullae. An early inventory survives, although some objects traditionally associated with Theodelinda may actually be made well after her death in 628, when she was buried at