Register 1: Coronation of the Virgin; angel crowning the Virgin; blessing gesture; two standing angels holding candlesticks.
Register 2: Death of the Virgin (Dormition); Christ holding the soul of the Virgin; blessing gesture; apostles; angels.
Angels holding navettes and swinging censers in the spandrels.
Medallion enclosing a rounded quatrefoil in the gable.
Natanson (1951): French, c. 1330.
Van Os (1996): France, 1st half of the 14th century.
Williamson and Davies (2014): France (Paris), early 14th century.
Attribution
Master of the Death of the Virgin (Natanson, 1951)
Hinges
Traces of two missing hinges on either side.
Polychromy - Gilding
Extensive traces of polychromy and gilding (probably not all original): blue (background), red (architectural details; clothes), gold (hair; beards; crown; stars on the background; clothes; quatrefoil; along the hems).
Some of the polychromy, such as the starry background, could be 15th century.
Reverse
Flat and smooth. Some scratches.
Labels with handwritten inscriptions: 'The nail at the top must be taken out before the ivory can be removed', 'On loan from H. Bowden May 30 1882', 'H. B. Bowden Southgate House Chesterfield'.
Red 1857 Manchester exhibition label 'Treasures Exhibition, 1857. Museum of Art. H. Bowden Esq. proprietor'.
Object Condition
A hole is pierced in the top of the gable, probably for hanging (later).
Missing: pinnacles and pieces at the base of the gable on either side; terminal fleuron at the top of the gable; left hand of the angel on the right in the Dormition scene.
Underside crosshatched with two dowel holes to affix to a pedestal.
Provenance
Collection of [John] Bruno Bowdon (d. 1850), Southgate House, Clowne, near Chesterfield, Derbyshire, by 1848 (probably in the Bowdon family for many generations before), passed to his son Henry Bowdon, Esquire (at least 1850-1862). Collection of Mr George H. Tite, london, from 1925; given to the museum in 1941 by Mrs G. H. Tite and Mr Arthur L. Tite (his son) in memory of Mr Tite.
Bibliography
Memoirs Illustrative of the History and Antiquities of the County and City of Lincoln... (London, 1850), p. xlii.
Art Treasures exhibition, Manchester, 1857 (label).
J. B. Waring, Art Treasures of the United Kingdom: Consisting of Examples Selected from the Manchester Treasures Exhibition, 1857 (London, 1858), p. 25.
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. 180.
M. Longhurst, 'Some war-time additions to the ivory collections at South Kensington', in Burlington Magazine 79 (1941), p. 22.
L. Grodecki, Ivoires français (Paris, 1947), pp. 95-96.
J. Natanson, Gothic Ivories of the 13th and 14th Centuries (London, 1951), pp. 21-22, fig. 29.
H. van Os, Een engel in de koffer: Willem Neutelings en zijn verzameling (Baarn, 1996), p. 26, fig. 30.
P. Williamson and G. Davies, Medieval Ivory Carvings 1200-1550 (London, 2014), no. 58.
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