"Carved Boxwood Knife Sheath Dated 1564 "
A carved boxwood knife sheath, dated 1564, richly decorated with religious scenes in relief arranged in superimposed registers. The composition is dominated, in the upper section, by the figure of Evil, represented as a hieratic face above the central scene of Adam and Eve around the Tree of Knowledge, the foundational episode of the Fall. This iconographic hierarchy lends the whole a strong symbolic dimension, contrasting temptation, sin, and the human condition. For comparison, a very similar example is held in the Brummer Collection at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, attesting to the quality and rarity of this type of boxwood carving. 
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