Symmachi–Nicomachi diptych

[1] The earliest description of the leaves dates to 1717, when an inventory of the monastery of Montier-en-Der records them as doors on an early thirteenth century reliquary.

[2] Art historian Richard Delbrueck uncovered a mention of the panels in the abbot Adso's tenth century biography of Bercharius, who founded the monastery c. 670.

The ivory is fractured in several places, with some sections missing completely, together with high-relief areas such as the female figure's face, left hand and right arm.

[4] The Symmachi leaf in the London diptych has an ivy-crowned woman sprinkling incense over the flames of a square altar, garlanded with oak wreaths.

Just as the majority of the Roman world had rejected polytheism in favor of Christianity, so too it left behind the techniques of proportion and perspective that characterised the art of its forebears.