Tric-trac tableman with two men in combat

Most surviving works from the Romanesque period come from church treasuries, which explains the great rarity of secular objects. The latter largely belong to the realm of games, chess or tric‑trac, which were much loved throughout the Romanesque era.

The game of tric‑trac, commonly referred to as “table game” during medieval time, calls for a board, fifteen tablemen (gaming pieces) per player, and three dice. In the Roman de Troie, written by Benoît de Sainte‑Maure in about 1160‑1170, tric‑trac was discussed in association with chess, and its positive and elitist side is quite clear: “One may say that the Trojans invented all that ingeniousness, entertainment or courtly distraction can do to give pleasure and joy. It is there that they invented […] chess, tric‑trac, the game of dice and many other recreations as luxurious as they are interesting and agreeable”.¹

Thus, like chess, the game of tric‑trac long remained a pleasure deserved for the top echelons of the top echelons of the aristocracy, taking on an important symbolic value. The board on which dice were thrown, and on which the tablemen were placed, was regarded as a miniature battlefield. As we can see here, the accessories most often represented scenes of combat in the form of a duel, set within the piece’s limited circular frame. A game offers the presentation of a world in which individuals are rational actors, yet they depend on the power of destiny. The sophistication of certain expressions of iconography, luxury material and virtuoso sculpture equally underline the importance of players who involve themselves in duels beyond the condition of ordinary humanity. For instance, a single board could involve a match between tablemen adorned with stories of Samson, on the one hand, and their opponents, with images related to the labours of Hercules, on the other. Such accessories could show a quality of sculpture far from inferior to that of religious ivories.²The tablemen that have come down to thus bear precious witness to the taste for luxury and aristocratic culture in the twelfth century.

This tableman formerly in the Stroganoff collection, deeply‑cut and carved out of walrus ivory (also known as morse ivory),³ is contoured by a foliate motif extending outwards. In the middle, in very high relief, two men dressed in long sleeved short tunics, wearing helmets and armour, are shown in full combat.

This tableman was compared stylistically by Adolph Goldschmidt to another twenty or so others from different game sets, marked by decorated borders and dancing figures in profile carved in high relief. Three of them bear an image of Saint Martin dividing his cloak, which led Goldschmidt

to designate them all under the title of the “Saint Martin group”.⁴ He suggested these pieces were made in Tournai (now in western Belgium), supporting his thesis especially on the presence in that city of an Abbey dedicated to Saint Martin.

Subsequently, Vivian Mann resumed the study of the Saint Martin group, and added to its number.⁵ She believed that the pieces in this group, which reflected the influence of both Anglo‑Saxon and Mosan art, could have come from a Northern France. She hypothesized the existence of an important workshop in the Abbey of Saint Martin aux Jumeaux near Amiens, the putative site of the episode in which the saint gave part of his cloak to a beggar.⁶Recently,  writing about one of the tablemen in the group, housed in the Victoria and Albert Museum, Paul Williamson questioned the idea of making a direct connection between the iconography of Saint Martin and the tablemen’s place of origin, recalling that only three of the group show the Saint, while most of the others—as in the case before us—represent scenes of combat.⁷ He thus rightly suggested a return to the proposal, as John Beckwith had already put forward, that these tablemen should be compared in style with English art of the period 1120–1140, and principally with the miniatures in the Saint Albans Psalter.⁸

Indeed, the latter have the same kind of dancing, slightly lanky figures, with long, slender arms and faces most often shown in profile, marked by strong noses and prominent eyes. Likewise, Williamson underlined the close resemblance of the foliate borders in the calendar medallions of the Psalter and those surrounding some of the pieces in the group of tablemen. It thus seems reasonable to place the crafting of some of these tablemen in England, in the manner of the group of Saint Albans ivories, of which the oval box in the Victoria and Albert Museum is certainly one of the finest examples.

According to Beckwith and Williamson certain tric‑trac tablemen could be directly attributed to the school of Saint Albans, and dated to the second quarter of the twelfth century. Here, however, while the figures still present the dancing, lanky aspect we described above, the more harmonious proportions of the men with smaller heads and the less emphatic treatment of the faces would lead us to place the creation of our tableman to a slightly later date, towards the middle of the twelfth century⁹.

In our current state of knowledge, none of the known tric‑trac tablemen can be identified as coming from the same series as this one, formerly in the Stroganoff collection, and it appears to be the sole remaining piece from the game set to which it belonged.