The decorative sculpture of the British Museum citole and its visual context

The British Museum citole, an extrordinary survival from the Middle Ages, is a uniquely important cultural artefact. The fact that it is now the sole remaining example of its genre certainly does not mean that we should despair about locating it in the wider cultural context in which it was produced. On the contrary, it could be argued that the citole’s very uniqueness makes it even more important that we try to identify this background. As a contribution to this objective, I shall aim here to situate the instrument in its original visual context. [...]