Courting couple (meeting of lovers); couple holding hands; tree.
Twisted columns; foliated decoration.
Longhurst 1929: Italian, end of 14th century.
Williamson and Davies 2014: Northern Italian (Venice or Lombardy), about 1420-30.
Attribution
Unknown
Polychromy - Gilding
Traces of gilding and polychromy: red (column bases, spandrels, belt, lips), gold (background).
Reverse
Flat, with scoring.
Comments
This panel probably once decorated the sides of a casket, together with three pieces of identical size and matching iconography in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (inv. 17.190.259, 260 and 261). See related objects.
Provenance
Described by Hans Semper as being in South Kensington Museum in 1896, probably on loan since 1882 from the personal collection of Prime Minister William E. Gladstone. Purchased in 1900 from Sydney Vacher, architect, London.
Bibliography
H. Semper, 'Über eine besondere Gruppe elfenbeinerner Klappaltärchen des XIV Jahrhunderts', in Zeitschrift für Christliche Kunst 11 (1898), no. 6, p. 174.
List of Objects in the Art Division South Kensington Museum acquired during the Year 1900. Arranged according to the dates of acquisition, with appendix and indices (London, 1903), p. 155.
M. Longhurst, Catalogue of Carvings in Ivory, Victoria and Albert Museum, 2 vols (London, 1927 and 1929), II (1929), pp. 68-69.
P. Williamson and G. Davies, Medieval Ivory Carvings 1200-1550 (London, 2014), no. 232.
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