Article
Newsletter: Summer 2006
Students of nineteenth-century art have devoted increasing attention to Orientalism in recent decades, and the museum's collections...support seminars on this topical subject. [This] Romantic dagger, dated ca. 1840, adds a new dimension of historiography to such study, raising questions about mid-nineteenth-century attitudes toward the Crusades. The dagger's gilt bronze handle takes the form of a Saracen standing over a crouching knight, who is dressed in chain mail and plate armor and holding up a cross to his conqueror. The Saracen holds a mace as though preparing to strike, leaving the viewer in suspense as to whether he intends to spare his vanquished opponent. The Saracen has been identified as the Sultan Saladin (1137-1193), and the knight as Reginald de Chatillon (d. 1187), a rogue crusader who attacked both Saracens and Christians until he was captured and executed by the Sultan himself. Saladin is thus portrayed as an honorable, chivalric figure, much as he appears in Romantic literature, including Sir Walter Scott's novel The Talisman (1825). It is also possible that the identifications are incorrect, in which case this scene could be an incite ment to revenge against the infidels.
The sheath departs from the style and subject of the handle: on the front and back, against a geometrically diaper patterned background, knights in plate armor recline among rococo flower garlands. Perhaps, like the example of Rinaldo in Gerusalemme Liberata by Torquato Tasso (1544-1595), the knights warn of the perils of love and the dan gers of abandoning one's mission.
The dagger's origin, although most likely French or German, is not certain, and the maker and designer have yet to be identified . It was probably intended as a ceremonial or decorative object, in spite of the steel blade that allows it to function as a weapon rather than solely as a decoration.
The sheath departs from the style and subject of the handle: on the front and back, against a geometrically diaper patterned background, knights in plate armor recline among rococo flower garlands. Perhaps, like the example of Rinaldo in Gerusalemme Liberata by Torquato Tasso (1544-1595), the knights warn of the perils of love and the dan gers of abandoning one's mission.
The dagger's origin, although most likely French or German, is not certain, and the maker and designer have yet to be identified . It was probably intended as a ceremonial or decorative object, in spite of the steel blade that allows it to function as a weapon rather than solely as a decoration.
