Register 1: Crucifixion with the Virgin and saint John the Evangelist.
Register 2: seated Virgin and Child (Sedes Sapientiae); Christ seated frontally; Christ holding a fruit or orb in his left hand; Virgin holding a fruit or orb in her right hand; crown.
Pierced rounded trefoils in the spandrels; columns.
Westwood 1876: England, 13th century.
Longhurst 1929: England, end of the 13th century.
Williamson and Davies 2014: England, c. 1300.
Attribution
Unknown
Hinges
Traces of two missing hinges on either side.
Polychromy - Gilding
Traces of polychromy: red (underthe arches; cross), blue (backgrounds).
Reverse
Flat and smooth.
Object Condition
Hole pierced at the top probably for fixing an architectural canopy.
Missing: the top of the upper arch and gable.
Deep crack at the apex of the lower arch.
Provenance
Found in Haydon Square in the Minories, London, on 12 September 1853, on the site of the Abbey of Saint Clare; collection of Reverend Thomas Hugo (b. 1820, d. 1876); acquired from his widow by the museum in 1877.
Bibliography
Journal of the Archaeological Institute, XII (1855), p. 88.
Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society, I (1860), fig. p. 56 and p. 134.
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. 8022.
J. O. Westwood, Fictile Ivories in the South Kensington Museum (London, 1876), no. 391 ('58.231).
List of Objects in the Art Division, South Kensington. Acquired During the Year 1877. Arranged According to the Dates of their Acquisition (London, 1878), p. 63.
R. Koechlin, 'Les Diptyques à décor de roses', in Gazette des Beaux-Arts (1918), p. 244.
R. Koechlin, Les Ivoires gothiques français (Paris, 1924), I, p. 161.
M. Longhurst, English Ivories (London, 1926), no. LIII, pp. 49, 101.
M. Longhurst, Catalogue of Carvings in Ivory, Victoria and Albert Museum, 2 vols (London, 1927 and 1929), II (1929), p. 5, pl. II.
Exhibition of English Mediaeval Art, exhibition catalogue, London, Victoria and Albert Museum, 1930, no. 196.
D. A. Porter, Ivory Carvings in Later Medieval England 1200-1400 (unpublished PhD thesis, State University of New York at Binghamton, 1974), pp. 90-94, no. 28.
D. A. Porter, Ivory Carvings in Later Medieval England 1200-1400, State University of New York at Binghamton, PhD 1974 (Ann Arbor, 1986: University Microfilms International), no. 28.
M. Gibson, The Liverpool Ivories: late antique and medieval ivory and bone carving in Liverpool Museum and the Walker Art Gallery (London, 1994), p. 72, pl. XXVIIb.
J. Warren, Medieval and Renaissance Sculpture in the Ashmolean Museum, 3 vols (Oxford, 2014), Vol. 2: Sculptures in Stone, Clay, Ivory, Bone and Wood, p. 552, in relation to no. 158.
P. Williamson and G. Davies, Medieval Ivory Carvings 1200-1550 (London, 2014), no. 52.
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