Imperial diptych offerings to the emperor. However, the fact that the Barberini ivory was almost certainly not a diptych, but some kind of imperial icon without a second panel is a serious argument against the existence of the imperial diptych type. The two panels representing the empress Ariadne, in the Bargello in Florence and the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, also belong to the hypothesied imperial diptych type. They are the only central panels of such a diptych (other than the Barberini ivory) to survive, since all other fragments of such diptychs are from side panels. Imperial diptych In Late Antiquity, an imperial
Symmachi–Nicomachi diptych important events, most often the attainment of the consulship. The diptych form, at least originally, served as a pair of covers for wax writing tablets. The work as a whole has been interpreted as a study in nostalgia. Just as the majority of the Roman world had rejected polytheism in favor of Christianity, so too it left behind the techniques of proportion and perspective that characterised the art of its forebears. ---- Symmachi–Nicomachi diptych The Symmachi–Nicomachi diptych is a book-size, Late Antique ivory diptych dating to the late fourth or early fifth century, whose panels depict scenes of ritual pagan