Saddle in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, June 2010

Saddle

Central European (probably Tyrol), about 1430–60

Unidentified artist

Place of Manufacture: Tyrol, Western Austria or Northern Italy

Dimensions: Overall: 36.2 x 54.6 x 37.1 cm (14 1/4 x 21 1/2 x 14 5/8 in.)

Medium or Technique: Bone over wood core, lined underneath with hide covered with birch bark, polychromy

Classification: Tools & equipment

Accession Number: 69.944

Staghorn, carved and partly colored, lined with birch bark; decorated with figures in low relief against background of inhabited scrollwork; St. George and the Dragon; men and women in fashionable secular costumes holding inscribed ribbons with initials (G and S) and German inscriptions (motto: Gedenkch und Halt "Look before you leap" or "Think and Hold", depending on translation, repeated three times).

This saddle, intended for use in parades, belongs to a group of twenty-one saddles believed to have been gifts from German emperor Sigismund I (1368-1437) to knights in the Order of the Dragon upon their induction. This saddle is decorated with bone plaques skillfully carved in low relief with depictions of courtly men and women and Saint George battling the dragon. On both sides of this saddle is inscribed, in German, "GEDENKCH UND HALT," which means literally "think and stop" or, colloquially, "look before you leap."

Text from: www.mfa.org/collections/object/saddle-64967