Register 1: Presentation in the Temple; maid holding a candlestick and a basket of doves brought as offerings; Christ standing on the altar between the Virgin and Simeon; hanging lamp. Crucifixion with the Virgin and saint John the Evangelist; sun and moon.
Register 2: Annunciation; dove of the Holy Spirit. Visitation.
Beaded border.
Koechlin 1924: France, 2nd half of the 14th century.
Longhurst 1929: French, 2nd half of the 14th century.
Williamson and Davies 2014: French (Paris), 1340-50.
Attribution
Unknown
Hinges
Traces of two missing hinges on the right side.
Reverse
Smooth and flat. Traces of a raised border along the edges and a thick vertical strip down the centre, which also appears on the back on the other leaf, probably indicating that the diptych once was set in an open-backed frame.
Object Condition
Upper border partly broken. Small breakages at the top and around the hinges. Hole drilled in the upper right hand area.
Comments
The right wing of this diptych is now in the Musée de Cluny (Cl. 447).
At the time of the 1853 sale, this wing was in a metal frame.
Provenance
Collection of Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (b. 1812, d. 1852); Pugin sale, Sotheby and Wilkinson, 12 February 1853, lot 103, purchased by John Webb, London, on behalf of the Museum of Ornamental Art at Marlborough House.
Bibliography
List of Works of Art Acquired by the South Kensington [and Victoria and Albert] Museum during the Years 1852-1910 (published annually, London, 1868-1912), p. 41.
W. Maskell, Ivories Ancient and Mediaeval in the South Kensington Museum (London, 1872), p. 1.
R. Koechlin, Les Ivoires gothiques français (Paris, 1924), I, p. 191; II, no. 383.
M. Longhurst, Catalogue of Carvings in Ivory, Victoria and Albert Museum, 2 vols (London, 1927 and 1929), II (1929), p. 22, pl. XVI.
R. H. Randall, The Golden Age of Ivory: Gothic Ivory Carvings in North American Collections (New York, 1993), p. 92, in relation to no. 110.
Pugin. A Gothic Passion, ed. by P. Atterbury and C. Wainwright (New Haven and London, 1994), p. 97, fig. 176.
C. Wainwright, 'Principles true and false: Pugin and the foundation of the Museum of Manufactures', in The Burlington Magazine 136 (June 1994), pp. 358 and 363, fig. 17
J. Warren, Medieval and Renaissance Sculpture in the Ashmolean Museum, 3 vols (Oxford, 2014), Vol. 2: Sculptures in Stone, Clay, Ivory, Bone and Wood, pp. 613-14, in relation to no. 190.
P. Williamson and G. Davies, Medieval Ivory Carvings 1200-1550 (London, 2014), no. 95.
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