2-727-060 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Descent from the Cross, 1653. The prince of Liechtenstein, Karl Eusebius--one of the preeminent Central European art collectors and patrons of music during the 1600s--commissioned this work. The contract challenged Lenckhardt to carve an eight-figure group out of a single huge African elephant tusk from Eusebius’s own treasury. Because of the tusk’s hollow interior, the artist plugged the sculpture with an additional piece of ivory at the base, now the skull and bone at the foot of the cross. The story unfolds only by walking around the sculpture, with every viewpoint offering subtle fluctuations of the narrative.