2-721-275 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Head of a pastoral staff, 14th century?, (1881). Etching of an ivory crozier head made in Paris, the openwork volute either being from the fourteenth or the nineteenth century, with mid-nineteenth century metalwork additions. The carved decoration features Christ on the cross between the Virgin and St John the Evangelist, supported by a kneeling angel. The knop below is in the form of a small hexagonal building with niches containing the figures of saints. A crozier is a crook-shaped pastoral staff carried as a symbol of authority and pastoral care by a bishop or abbot. From "The South Kensington Museum", a book of engraved illustrations, with descriptions, of the works of art in the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London (formerly known as the South Kensington Museum). [Sampson Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington, London, 1881]