Diptych

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. A diptych is any object with two flat plates attached at a hinge. Devices of this form were quite popular in the ancient world, wax tablets being coated with wax on inner faces, for recording notes and for measuring time and direction. The term is also used figuratively for a thematically-linked sequence of two books. In Late Antiquity, ivory diptychs with...
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Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. A diptych is any object with two flat plates attached at a hinge. Devices of this form were quite popular in the ancient world, wax tablets being coated with wax on inner faces, for recording notes and for measuring time and direction. The term is also used figuratively for a thematically-linked sequence of two books. In Late Antiquity, ivory 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, but some, perhaps including the Poet and Muse diptych at Monza, may have been made for private use. 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. The largest surviving Byzantine ivory panel (428 mm x 143mm), is a leaf from a diptych in the Justinian court manner of ca 525-50, which features an archangel.