Register 1: Last Judgement with Resurrection of the Dead (Christ in Glory); angels blowing trumpets; souls rising from their tombs.
Register 2: Crucifixion with the Virgin and saint John the Evangelist; figure of the Church (Ecclesia) or saint Mary Magdalene collecting Christ's blood in a chalice at the foot of the cross; Longinus piercing Christ's side; Stephaton giving Christ vinegar; men on ladders.
Register 3: Adoration of the Magi. Nativity; swaddled Christ.
Angels swinging censers in the spandrels. Pierced trefoils.
Longhurst 1929: England, end of the 13th or beginning of the 14th century.
Natanson 1951 and Williamson 1999: England, c. 1300.
Williamson and Davies 2014: England, c. 1300.
Attribution
Unknown
Hinges
Traces of two missing hinges on either side. Traces of two phases of hinges, the first one seems to have been ring hinges.
Reverse
Flat and smooth.
Object Condition
Missing: head of Christ in the lower register; arms of the two figures on ladders; left hand of Christ and figures in the upper register; spear held by Longinus partly broken; spear and sponge held by Stephaton.
Comments
Together with two wings also in the Victoria and Albert Museum collection (A31-1996), this piece forms one of only three known complete English triptychs of the Gothic period.
Provenance
In the possession of John Webb (b. 1799, d. 1880), London, in 1862: purchased from him by the Museum in 1867.
Bibliography
Catalogue of the Special Exhibition of Works of Art of the Mediaeval, Renaissance, and more recent periods on loan at the South Kensington Museum, June 1862..., revised edition, exhibition catalogue (London, 1863), no. 71.
Inventory of the Objects in the Art Division of the Museum at South Kensington, arranged according to the dates of their acquisition (London, 1868), I, p. 9.
W. Maskell, Ivories Ancient and Mediaeval in the South Kensington Museum (London, 1872), p. 94.
J. O. Westwood, Fictile Ivories in the South Kensington Museum (London, 1876), no. 392 (`73.138).
M. Longhurst, English Ivories (London, 1926), no. LV, pp. 43 and 102.
M. Longhurst, Catalogue of Carvings in Ivory, Victoria and Albert Museum, 2 vols (London, 1927 and 1929), II (1929), p. 5, pl. II.
Exhibition of English Mediaeval Art, exhibition catalogue, London, Victoria and Albert Museum, 1930, no. 195.
J. Natanson, 'Mediæval and Renaissance Art in the Collection', in H. Wernher, A.A. Longden and J. Natanson, The Wernher Collection (Lutton Hoo, 1950), p. 27.
J. Natanson, Gothic Ivories of the 13th and 14th Centuries (London, 1951), p. 34, fig. 21.
D. A. Porter, Ivory Carvings in Later Medieval England 1200-1400 (unpublished PhD thesis, State University of New York at Binghamton, 1974), no. 30.
P. Williamson, 'Acquisitions of Sculpture at the Victoria and Albert Museum, 1992-1999', in Burlington Magazine, CXLI, 1161 (December 1999), p. 783. fig. 1.
P. Williamson, 'Medieval Ivory Carvings in the Wernher Collection', in Apollo (May 2002), p. 18.
P. Williamson and G. Davies, Medieval Ivory Carvings 1200-1550 (London, 2014), no. 53.
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