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Mirror case (valve de miroir) (Back)

Mirror case (valve de miroir) (Back)
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Front

Subject
Secular. Courtly love. Romance.

Repository Institution
www.vmfa.state.va.us

To purchase an image
www.vmfa.state.va.us


Richmond, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

69.45

Ivory

Height: 121mm
Depth: 9.5mm

Tournament; jousting knights in armour; ladies watching from the castle battlements; two heralds in trees blowing trumpets; horses; shields with flowers.
Corner terminals: four crouching monsters.

Randall 1993 and Detroit 1997: France (Paris), 1330-1350.
Museum's opinion 2012 (based on C. Little's opinion): France (Paris), 1320-1350.


Attribution
Unknown

Reverse
Back turned with a depression for (missing) mirror. Rosettes encircle the mirror opening. No socket.

Object Condition
Missing: three corner terminals (only the lower right one is genuine, the other ones are later replacements).
Long vertical crack repaired with an inset at the base.

Provenance
Collection of John Hunt, Dublin: bought from him in April 1969 thanks to the Adolph D. and Wilkins C. Williams Fund.

Bibliography
'La Chronique des arts', in Gazette des Beaux Arts (February 1970), no. 1213, fig. 244.
Rarer Gifts than Gold: Fourteenth-Century Art in Scottish Collections, exhibition catalogue, Glasgow, Burrell Collection, touring exhibition, 1988, no. 12, p. 18.
R. H. Randall, The Golden Age of Ivory: Gothic Ivory Carvings in North American Collections (New York, 1993), no. 188, pl. 16.
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. 59.
E. L'Estrange, 'Gazing at Gawain: Reconsidering Tournaments, Courtly Love, and the Lady Who Looks', in Medieval Feminist Forum 44, no. 2 (2008), pp. 74-96 (pp. 74, 92, fig. 1). Available at: http://ir.uiowa.edu/mff/vol44/iss2/11 (accessed 10-10-2012).


Image

© Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Photography: Travis Fullerton.
Image credit line: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond. Adolph D. and Wilkins C. Williams Fund.

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