Footnotes

• Provenance:
  Belgian private collection, formed in the 1950s.
  
  Literature:
  Small table tops like this are thought to have been used during feasts for the deceased throughout the early Byzantine world. There is a similar hemispherical example in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, (acc no. 47.100.50).
  
  For discussion of similarly decorated tables and their re-use in Islamic contexts, cf. F.B. Flood, 'The Medieval Trophy as an Art Historical Trope: Coptic and Byzantine 'Altars' in Islamic Contexts', Muqarnas: An Annual on the Visual Culture of the Islamic World , XVIII, 2001, pp.41-72. Flood notes that depictions of the Last Supper in East Christian art show a sigma-shaped or round table rather than a rectangular one.

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Category: Antiquities

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