CARVING (t)E. b_rringe, from kerren, to carve. AS. ccorfan, Icel. kyrfa, Ger. kerbcn. ulti mately connected NV ';iRigetv, yraphein. to write, originally to cut ). A subordinate branch of sculpture, usually performed on ivory or wood. Ivory was the favorite material for this purpose in the East from an early period. Among the Babylonians. who likewise practiced gem-engraving to a great extent, carved heads .for staves were executed in vast quantities. as every Babylonian carried a stair and a signet ring. At a later period ivory was chiefly em ployed in small works. usually of a decorative character. the earliest period statues of the gods were generally of wood. painted, gilt, or draped with colored robes, different kinds of wood being appropriated to different divinities.
(See ACROLITIIS ; CHASING; CHRYSELEPHANTINE, etc.) Carvings in ivory form an important branch of early Christian sculpture. Among the most curious of thee are the ivory tablets adorned en the outside with low-reliefs, and on the inside coated with wax for the purpose of receiving writing. The chair inlaid with ivory that belonged to Archbishop Maximinus in the cathe dral at Ravenna. is of this period (346-555). In 803 Charlemagne received two richly carved doors as a present from Constantinople. but works of the same kind were executed much earlier. (See IVORY Toward the end of the Middle Ages the art of earring in wood was brought to a high degree of perfection in Ger many. (See. Woof) CAnvING.1 The art here took on a very realistic form. Carved shrines were deepened in order to give room for the ar rangement of the scene in various planes. The foreground figures were frequently in entire relief standing out as statuette-. the others
on a receding plane being in high relief. while the background objects were in low re lief. Landscape backgrounds often figured in these scenes, and an additional touch of real ism was given them by coloring and modeling the costumes after the gay fashion of the day. No florid did this style become that it even affected the more serious plastic art of the time. and its influence is felt in some of the sculpture of the present. or of very recent times. The elaboration of these carved works rem-hed to their architectural setting until the naturalistic tendency became so marked as to develop enrling flourishes of leaves and tendrils in the frame work. Suabia is particularly Hell in early altar pieces of this kind. Many of the Belgian churches also possess very beautiful examples of wood-c•ar•ing. Miehael Wohlgemuth of Nu remberg, and after him Veit `to--. were eminent carvers in wood. The wood-earring 011 the great altar of the cathedral at Schleswig by Hans Briiggemann belongs to the beginning of the Six teenth Century. Many graceful specimens of woodcarving, on a smaller belonging to this period, are to he seen in museums. Nurem berg was for its woo(1-earvings; but only a few of the many works ascribed to him can be assigned mith certainty to AThert Diirer. Portrait medallions, usually cut in box, were much in vogue during the early part of the Six teenth Century. The first artist in this line was Hans Schwartz of Augsburg. During the Seventeenth and Eighteenth centuries we find ivory again extensively employed in crucifixes, crosses, and goblets, with relief representations.