Netherlandish (Dinant or Malines) Diam. 20 in. (50.8 cm) Gift of
Irwin Untermyer, 1964 (64.101.1498) The motif of the pelican
piercing its breast to feed its young with its blood became a
popular symbol of the sacrifice of Christ during the late
medieval and early Renaissance period. Represented in the middle
of this plate with three of its young, the elegantly formed bird
directs its beak toward its own breast in a charitable gesture
of self-sacrifice. The design of this plate was executed through
the traditional, painstaking method of brass beating. Certain
motifs, like the pelican here, were repeated almost without
variation for more efficient production, though the encircling
motifs often varied from plate to plate, becoming more complex
in many of the late fifteenth-century examples. Here, the
central motif is surrounded by a circular design of grapes,
intertwined with tendrils and vines. Many such plates were
produced in Dinant, a French-speaking town in the Low Countries,
which was the center of a flou