Four busts: three hooded figures including a tonsured monk and two ladies; a youth wearing a chaplet pierced with small holes; on both sides a lozenge enclosing the face of a bearded man.
Koechlin 1924: France, 1st half of 14th century.
Longhurst 1929: France, 1st half of the 14th century.
Detroit 1997: France (Paris) or German (Cologne?), c. 1300-20.
Paris 1998: Paris or Rhineland, c. 1300.
Williamson and Davies 2014: France (Paris) or possibly German (Cologne?), c. 1300-1320.
Attribution
Unknown
Reverse
Carved in the round.
Object Condition
The head of the youth has been broken off and mended with a pin through the shoulder.
Comments
Very similar to Koechlin 1142.
Provenance
In the possession of John Webb (b. 1799, d. 1880), London: 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. 151.
W. Maskell, Ivories Ancient and Mediaeval in the South Kensington Museum (London, 1872), no. 278-67.
A. Rohde, 'Ein Dolchmesser des 14. Jahrhunderts im Hamburgischen Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe', in Zeitschrift für historiche Waffen- und Kostümkunde 9 (1921-1922), pp. 155-156 (p. 156, fig. 3). Fully accessible online at: http://archive.org/stream/ZeitschriftFuerHistorischeWaffenkunde09#page/n193/mode/1up
R. Koechlin, Les Ivoires gothiques français (Paris, 1924), I, p. 422, II, no. 1141; III, pl. CXC.
M. Longhurst, Catalogue of Carvings in Ivory, Victoria and Albert Museum, 2 vols (London, 1927 and 1929), II (1929), p. 50, pl. XLV.
O. Beigbeder, Ivory (New York, 1965), fig. 61.
T. Müller, 'Ein früher gotischer Prunkdolch', in Pantheon 33 (1975), pp. 203-7, figs. 5-6.
C. Blair, 'The Word 'Baselard'', in Journal of the Arms and Armour Society 11 (1984), pp. 193-206.
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. 52, pp. 220-221.
L'art au temps des rois maudits: Philippe le Bel et ses fils (1285-1328), exhibition catalogue, Paris, Grand Palais, 1998, no. 103.
P. Williamson and G. Davies, Medieval Ivory Carvings 1200-1550 (London, 2014), no. 224.
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