Gothic Ivories Project | 3 panels, 2 registers, 3 arches across (frise d'arcatures) (fragments of a quadriptych?) (Front)

Wing 1
Register 1: Crucifixion; swooning Virgin supported by Holy Women; saint John the Evangelist and onlookers; rugged cross.
Register 2: Adoration of the Magi.
Wing 2
Register 1: Resurrection; Holy Women at the Tomb, with angel seated on the tomb and three soldiers asleep; ointment pots; shroud; sceptre.
Register 2: Betrayal (Taking of Christ; Kiss of Judas); Christ restores Malchus' ear, cut by saint Peter.
Wing 3
Register 1: saint Michael and the devil; saint Peter holding a book and the key; saint Paul holding a sword.
Register 2: saint Laurence holding a gridiron; saint Anthony abbot with tau-headed staff, standing in flames; saint Christopher carrying Christ across the river.
Pointed trefoils in the spandrels. Roped border. Diapered pattern on the background.

Leeuwenberg 1969: France ('Master of the Agrafe Forgeries'), last quarter of the 18th century to 1st half of the 19th century.
Warren 2014: probably France, attributed to the 'Master of the Agrafe Forgeries', late 18th-early 19th century.

Attribution
Master of the Agrafe Forgeries (Leeuwenberg 1969)

Hinges
Traces of two missing hinges on the left and right side of wing 1 and 2; traces of two missing hinges on the left side of wing 3.

Reverse
Flat and smooth; later chamfering. Remains of glue and card.

Object Condition
Presumably missing at least one further two-register panel, to the left of wing 1. All three panels now cut in two parts.

Comments
The quadriptych would originally have folded onto itself in concertina style.

Provenance
Collection of L. H. Simmons, Woburn Hill, Addlestone, Surrey: his sale, Christie's, London, 31 May-1 June 1928, lot 244; collection of John Francis Mallett; his bequest to the Museum in 1947; Department of Western Art (WA 1947.191.213); transferred to the Department of Antiquities in May 2008.

Bibliography
J. Leeuwenberg, 'Early Nineteenth-Century Gothic Ivories', in Aachener Kunstblätter, 39 (1969), p. 139.
J. Warren, Medieval and Renaissance Sculpture in the Ashmolean Museum, 3 vols (Oxford, 2014), Vol. 2: Sculptures in Stone, Clay, Ivory, Bone and Wood, no. 189.

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