Seated Virgin and Child; Christ standing on the Virgin's left knee (missing).
Kleinbauer 1980: English, early 14th century.
London 1987: English, c. 1300.
Wixom 1988: London or Westminster, c. 1290-1300.
Randall 1993: English, early 14th century.
Detroit 1997: English (London?), c. 1300.
Museum's opinion 2011: English (London), c. 1300.
Attribution
Unknown
Reverse
Carved in the round but lower relief on the back.
Object Condition
Missing: right and left forearm of the Virgin, figure of Christ missing except for his right foot, hole in the Virgin's chest where a gem probably was (end of the nerve canal); bench.
Discoloured.
Provenance
Said to have been offered to Jean de Dormans when he was made Bishop of Lisieux in 1359. Georges J. Demotte, Paris and New York (1928). Mr. and Mrs. John Hunt, Drumleck Baily, Co. Dublin (1931-1979); Howard Ricketts, London (1979, as agent of the Hunts); The Cloisters Collection, 1979.
Bibliography
Loan Exhibition of French Gothic Art, exhibition catalogue, Detroit, Detroit Institute of Arts, 1928, no. 69.
An Exhibition of Gothic Art in Europe, ca. 1200-1400, exhibition catalogue, London, Burlington Fine Arts Club, 1936, no. 24, pl. XXVII.
D. Porter, Ivory Carving in later Medieval England, 1200-1400, (Ann Arbor, 1974), (Ph.D. Thesis, State University of New York at Binghamton), pp. 96, 98. 101-102, no. 33.
W. D. Wixom in The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Notable Acquisitions 1979-1980, pp. 22-23, ill.
W. E. Kleinbauer, 'Recent Major Acquisitions of Medieval Art by American Museums', in Gesta 19/1 (1980), p. 68, fig. 5.
N. Stratford, 'Glastonbury and two Gothic ivories in the United States', in British Archaeology Association (1983), pp. 208-209, 213, 215, n. 9-10, pl. LXXXVIb.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide (New York, 1983), p. 382, ill.
R. Marks et al., The Burrell Collection (London and Glasgow, 1983), p. 91, fig. 7.
R. Marks, A Portrait of a Collector: Sir William Burrell 1861-1958 (Glasgow, 1983), pp. 133-134.
W. D. Wixom, 'A Late Thirteenth-century English Ivory Madonna', in Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, vol. 50, no. 3 (1987), pp. 337-358, figs 1a-d.
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, 1987, no. 518 (N. Stratford).
Europe in the Middle Ages, introduction by C. Little and T. Husband (New Haven, 1987), p. 108.
B. Young, A Walk Through The Cloisters (New York, 1988), p. 106, ill.
W. D. Wixom, 'Medieval Sculpture at The Cloisters', in Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, vol. XLVI, no. 3 (winter 1988-1989), p. 61.
R. H. Randall, The Golden Age of Ivory: Gothic Ivory Carvings in North American Collections (New York, 1993), no. 33.
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. 35 (P. Barnet).
Mirror of the Medieval World, exhibition catalogue, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1999, no. 142, pp. 119-121 (with ill.).
P. Barnet and N. Wu, The Cloisters: Medieval Art and Architecture (New York, 2005), no. 48, p. 83 (with ill.).
P. Barnet, 'Medieval Europe', in Philippe de Montebello and The Metropolitan Museum of Art: 1977-2008, ed. by J. R. Houghton et al. (New York, 2009), p. 23.
P. Williamson and G. Davies, Medieval Ivory Carvings 1200-1550 (London, 2014), in relation to no. 13.
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