Pluteus with Griffins

Of uncertain date, especially because of a delicate firm­ness of structure that goes back to classical models, this relief also reveals close ties, perhaps through woven textiles, to the art of the Byzantine and Islamic East, ever inclined to the symbolic and heraldic meaning of the natural world and to the translation of living forms into static decoration. For these characteristics it may even be, as authoritative scholars have suggested, that this work from the Cathedral of Sorrento is to be dated in the Romanesque period.