Courting couple (meeting of lovers); offering of the heart; fashionable dress; tree; architecture; sword.
Flowers (roses) and pointed trefoils in the spandrels.
Longhurst 1929: France, end of the 14th century.
Randall 1985: North Italian (Lombardy or Milan), 1390-1400.
Williamson and Davies 2014: probably Northern Italy (Milan), c. 1380-1390.
Attribution
Unknown
Reverse
Back turned with a depression for (missing) mirror. The raised rim has been filed down.
Object Condition
Missing: upper, left and right sections, including the youth's head; four corner terminals, presumably foliated.
Reverse pitted.
Two holes drilled near bottom.
Comments
This fragment is similar to a mirror back in the collection of the British Museum, London, 1856,0623.106 (Longhurst 1929).
Provenance
Given to the museum by Sydney Vacher, Esq., in 1920.
Bibliography
Victoria and Albert Museum, Review of the Principal Acquisitions during the years 1911-1938, (London, 1920), p. 3.
M. Longhurst, Catalogue of Carvings in Ivory, Victoria and Albert Museum, 2 vols (London, 1927 and 1929), II (1929), p. 49, pl. XLVIII.
R. H. Randall, Masterpieces of Ivory from the Walters Art Gallery (New York, 1985), p. 232, in relation to no. 345.
R. H. Randall, The Golden Age of Ivory: Gothic Ivory Carvings in North American Collections (New York, 1993), in relation to no. 213.
P. Williamson and G. Davies, Medieval Ivory Carvings 1200-1550 (London, 2014), no. 207.
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