I recently blogged about a sagittary carved in walrus tusk ivory. I found a drawing of the work in an 1857 book, 1857 book is Miscellanea Graphica: Representations of Ancient, Medieval and Renaissance Remains in the Possession of Lord Londesborough, written and engraved by Frederick W. Fairholt, and published by Chapman and Hall, London. The entire text is online at the Internet Archive.
Browsing through this work, I found another sagittary, also in ivory, on a 14th Century casket, likely a wedding gift, per Fairholt. Here's the text from the book:
Note how the text here refers to the lion-centaur as a sagittary. Here's the whole casket.
And here's a close up of the sagittary and his sparring partner on the lid.
There is a stain on the book, right on the sagittary, unfortunately, but you can see him just fine. He is clearly a leonine sagittary, given his tail and back paws and bit of mane we can see. However, note that (like the Walrus-Tooth Wemic) he is holding a club, not a bow and arrow. In most examples, a medieval "sagittary" is an archer, whether equine or feline. I think it is very interesting that to Fairholt, a "sagittary" is a leonine centaur, even without bow and arrow. That is, the thng that defines a sagittary to him is not the gear equipped.
Also note that this sagittary has a second face, or at least, a second set of eyes and an elephant's trunk. That trunk! It does to me look not unlike some kind of monstrous prehensile male reproductive organ. Also, what the heck is going on with his right hand? With these additional features, the sagittary leaves the realm of pure lion-centaur and becomes a "drollery" or "grotesque," as commonly seen in Books of Hours as marginalia. I've blogged about drolleries, and you can see my favorite ones here.
The sphinx sparring with the wemic is also a drollery, what with the face on his hindquarters!
