Yesterday, I began turning my attention back to the elbows. The first thing that I wanted to sort out was the decoration of the inner edge. It's clear that the edge has pierced and filed work, but it's not clear exactly what it's supposed to look like. The two elbows on the statue are slightly different, and there is what appears to be some loss of material.
Years ago, I had concluded that the decoration looked more of less like this.
That the two central elements were meant to be fleurs, I had deduced primarily from the photo from which I made this image. It seamed to me that I was seeing one more or less intact fleur and another that had been damaged or carved with less care.
Looking again, and comparing this image with others (under magnification) I can now see that I misinterpreted the information.
This shows the same elbow from a different angle....
...and this is another (mirror reversed) view.
It's clear from these two pics that what I had interpreted as a fleur de lis was really the superimposition of a bi-lobed element and the elbow strap.
For comparison, here are a couple of views of the other arm. The decoration here appears to be all more or less the same height, and to be composed of bi-lobed "chess rooks". Note that the sculptor has made the holes all in the same line on this elbow, whereas they are at two different heights in the other.
Obviously, I needed to change my interpretation to match my new understanding. This is what I cam up with last night. You can see where I had previously center punched the hole locations, and that the new locations will punch out all traces of the previous idea.
Now.... the more I look at the images, the more I think that the elements on the corners should also be bilobate. I drew them like that initially, but abandoned that idea last night. So, I will go back and re-sketch them that way and see how I like that.
I hope to get that finalized later today so I can move on to correcting a couple of things in the elbows themselves.
Mac
