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Panel (fragment of a box), 2 registers, 3 arches across (frise d'arcatures; colonnettes) (CAST, front)

Panel (fragment of a box), 2 registers, 3 arches across (frise d'arcatures; colonnettes) (CAST, front)
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Front

Back

Subject
Religious. Saints.

Repository Institution
www.vam.ac.uk

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London, Victoria and Albert Museum

A.38-1923

Ivory

Height: 98 mm
Width: 53 mm
Depth: 11 mm

Register 1: Coronation of the Virgin; Christ crowning the Virgin; bench decorated with diamond patterns and foliated terminals.
Register 2: Martyrdom of saint Thomas Becket; three soldiers in armour; soldier striking saint Thomas on the head; chaplain (Grim) holding a cross; swords.
Beaded border.

Longhurst 1929: France, 2nd half of the 14th century.
Williamson and Davies 2014: French (Paris), c. 1330-1350.


Attribution
Unknown

Hinges
Traces of three missing hinges on one side (visible from the back).Three slots and pin holes, linked by a channel which would have held a rod fixing them together.

Reverse
Deeply recessed on the back to form the left leaf of a hinged box-diptych. Three circular recesses in a diagonal formation in the lower part. Trace of a diagonal divider across the recess, which was fitted into two slots in the borders.
Pink label with inscription: 'EXHIBITION OF ART TREASURES, 1857. [...] GOODERICH COURT. Meyrick no. 1334'.
Faint ink inscription along the lower part: 'Murder of Thomas à Becket. English 1348.'

Object Condition
Central hole in the upper part of the panel. A smaller hole, visible on the upper edge of the front, has not been fully excavated.
Faces of Christ and Saint Thomas Becket worn.

Comments
A cast was made of this piece in the 19th century and one of these casts is now Courtauld Institute of Art, Witt and Conway Library, no. 238.

Provenance
Acquired in North Wales by 'J. D.', an Oxford scholar, in whose possession it was in October 1786 (see Gentleman's magazine, 27 October 1786). Collection of Samuel Rush Meyrick, Goodrich Court, Herefordshire, by 1857 (but apparently not in the Douce collection, inherited by Meyrick in 1834); by descent to Augustus Meyrick; on loan to South Kensington Museum in 1869. Collection of the widow of Alfred Williams Hearn (b. 1842, d. 1903), Menton, possibly acquired in 1910 or 1912: her gift to the museum in 1923.

Bibliography
The Gentleman's Magazine LIV (1786), p. 925, fig. 8.
Exhibited at The Art Treasures of the United Kingdom, Old Trafford, Manchester, 1857 (then in Meyrick's collection).
Catalogue of the Armour and Miscellaneous Works of Art Known as the Meyrick Collection, lent by Colonel Meyrick of Goodrich Court, Hertfordshire, and Exhibited at the South Kensington Museum, ed. by J. Planche (London, 1869), no. 1334.
J. O. Westwood, Fictile Ivories in the South Kensington Museum (London, 1876), no. 419 ('58.228).
R. Koechlin, Les Ivoires gothiques français (Paris, 1924), I, p. 180 n. 3.
M. Longhurst, Catalogue of Carvings in Ivory, Victoria and Albert Museum, 2 vols (London, 1927 and 1929), II (1929), pp. 21-22, pl. XVII.
T. Borenius, Thomas à Becket in Art (London, 1932), p. 82, pl. 31/4.
D. A. Porter, Ivory Carvings in Later Medieval England 1200-1400 (unpublished PhD thesis, State University of New York at Binghamton, 1974), no. 47.
R. H. Randall, Masterpieces of Ivory from the Walters Art Gallery (New York, 1985), p. 216, in relation to no. 307.
R. H. Randall, The Golden Age of Ivory: Gothic Ivory Carvings in North American Collections (New York, 1993), p. 97, in relation to no. 121.
P. Williamson and G. Davies, Medieval Ivory Carvings 1200-1550 (London, 2014), no. 119.


Image

Conway Library IVORY CASTS © Courtauld Institute of Art.

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