Attribution
Unknown

Polychromy - Gilding
Traces of gilding: red bole for gold (hair and beard, sword handle, hilt, scabbard, reins, along the hems).

Reverse
Carved in the round.

Object Condition
Missing: blade of the sword (may have been made of a separate piece of ivory); section at the base; end of the beggar's crutch.
Vertical surface cracks.

Provenance
Private collection, East Anglia: sold in Norwich (before 1939); Sotheby's, London, 29 June 1939, lot 142: purchased at this sale by the museum through Mallet & Son with assistance from the National Art-Collections Fund.

Bibliography
P. M. Halm and R. Berliner, Das Hallesche Heiltum (Berlin, 1931), no. 66b, pl. 13a (for comparison).
E. Herzog and A. Ress, 'Elfenbein, Elfenbeinplastik', in Reallexikon zur deutschen Kunstgeschichte, IV, (Stuttgart, 1958), fig. 11, col. 1326.
Tardy, Les Ivoires (Paris, 1966), p. 85. (with ill.).
T. Müller, 'Ein früher gotischer Prunkdolch', in Pantheon 33 (1975), p. 206.
A. Burton and S. Haskins, European Art in the Victoria and Albert Museum (London, 1983), p. 22.
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. 39 (P. Williamson).
P. Williamson, 'Gothic Ivories in Detroit and Baltimore', in Apollo 145 (March 1997), pp. 48-50 (p. 49, fig. 3).
Glanz und Grösse des Mittelalters, Kölner Meisterwerk aus den grossen Sammlungen der Welt, ed. by D. Täube and M. Verena Fleck, exhibition catalogue, Cologne, Schnütgen Museum, 4 November 2011-26 February 2012, no. 22 (P. Williamson).
P. Williamson and G. Davies, Medieval Ivory Carvings 1200-1550 (London, 2014), no. 29.