Christ Presenting the Keys to Peter and the Law to Paul

Westphalia, 1150-1200
Ivory plaque
The Cloisters, New York City

Some of the iconography of this ivory is unusual. St. Paul has a curly beard, and St. Peter has none at all. Instead of sitting on a throne as in other Traditio Legis images, Christ stands on a dome. Domes were uncommon in the West in this period, but neither does it seem to be the famous dome of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, which has windows below the tiled roof, not a colonnade.

It is not certain that the inscription "1200" is contemporaneous. On the scroll only the letters TRE are visible.

the Traditio Legis / Traditio Clavum
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Photographed at the Cloisters by Richard Stracke, shared under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.