Attribution
Unknown

Polychromy - Gilding
Traces of polychromy and gilding (under microscope): red (lips), blue (lining of loincloth), gold (hair and beard; line along the hem).

Reverse
Carved in the round but lower relief on the back. Scoring.
Large circular hole behind Christ's right hip (where a dowel would have been originally inserted to attach the figure onto the cross). Four short parallel lines scored in the centre of Christ's back.

Object Condition
Missing: arms and feet of Christ.
The arms of Christ were originally made of two different pieces of ivory. They were replaced with modern pieces (see Longhurst 1929, pl. III) which have since been removed. Trimmed at the shoulders and shins to take new arms; central looping fold of the loincloth damaged and recarved.
Damage: drapery folds in the upper part of the front of the loincloth have been damaged and recut; chips to the hanging cloth falling from the knot of the loincloth, and to Christ's right ankle.

Comments
Probably by the same hand as a fragment from a Deposition in the Kunstindustrimuseet in Oslo (OK-09927) (Gaborit-Chopin 1978 and Detroit 1997).

Provenance
Collection of Thomas Gambier-Parry (d. 1888), Highnam Court, Gloucestershire, before 1875; purchased from Major E. Gambier Parry by the museum in 1921.

Bibliography
Victoria and Albert Museum, Review of the Principal Acquisitions during the years 1911-1938, (London, 1921), pp. 8-9, pl. 4.
R. Koechlin, Les Ivoires gothiques français (Paris, 1924), I, p. 263; II, no. 738bis; III, pl. CXXIbis.
M. Longhurst, English Ivories (London, 1926), pp. 41, 103, no LVI, pls 8 and 44.
M. Longhurst, Catalogue of Carvings in Ivory, Victoria and Albert Museum, 2 vols (London, 1927 and 1929), II (1929), pp. 6-7, pl. III (with modern arms and feet).
Exhibition of English Mediaeval Art, exhibition catalogue, London, Victoria and Albert Museum, 1930, no. 199.
P. Thoby, Le Crucifix des origines au Concile de Trente: étude iconographique (Nantes, 1959), p. 175, pl. CXXXVII, no. 293.
D. King, Opus Anglicanum. English Medieval Embroidery, exhibition catalogue, London, Victoria and Albert Museum, 1963, no. 169.
Tardy, Les Ivoires (Paris, 1966), ill. on p. 73.
A. Blunt, 'The History of Thomas Gambier Parry's Collection' in Burlington Magazine 109 (1967), no. 768, p. 116, fig. 45.
D. A. Porter, Ivory Carvings in Later Medieval England 1200-1400 (unpublished PhD thesis, State University of New York at Binghamton, 1974), pp. 102-105, no. 35.
D. Gaborit-Chopin, Ivoires du Moyen Age (Freiburg, 1978), no. and fig. 244.
Age of Chivalry: Art in Plantagenet England 1200-1400, ed. by J. J. G. Alexander and Paul Binski, exhibition catalogue, London, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1987, pp. 112, 328-329, no. 310.
W. Sauerländer, 'Age of chivalry. Art in Plantagenet England 1200-1400. Exhibition Review', in Burlington Magazine 130 (1988), pp. 149-51 (wrongly located to British Museum).
D. Gaborit-Chopin, Nouvelles acquisitions du département des objets d'art, 1985-1989 (Paris, 1990), no. 19, pp. 51-52.
D. Gaborit-Chopin, 'Gothic, VII, Ivories', in The Dictionary of Art, ed. by J. Turner (London, 1996), XIII, pp. 171-78 (p. 176)
Images in Ivory. Precious Objects of the Gothic Age, ed. by Peter Barnet, exhibition catalogue, Detroit, The Detroit Institute of Arts, and Baltimore, The Walters Art Gallery, 1997, no. 36, pp. 184-185.
L'art au temps des rois maudits: Philippe le Bel et ses fils (1285-1328), exhibition catalogue, Paris, Grand Palais, 1998, p. 149 (D. Gaborit-Chopin).
D. Gaborit-Chopin, Ivoires médiévaux, Ve-XVe siècle (Paris: Musée du Louvre, 2003), p. 311, fig. 106a.
D. Gaborit-Chopin, 'Gothic Ivoires: realities and prospects', in Gothic Art and Thought in the Later Medieval Period. Essays in Honor of Willibald Sauerländer, ed. by C. Hourihane (Princeton, 2011), pp. 157-75 (pp. 166-68).
J. Lowden, Medieval and Later Ivories in the Courtauld Gallery (London, 2013), no. 1.3, p. 132.
P. Williamson and G. Davies, Medieval Ivory Carvings 1200-1550 (London, 2014), no. 25.