Side 1: Attack on a castle; lion in the castle; knights in armour assaulting the castle; figures defending the castle with spears; swords; shields; couple; trees.
Side 2: Courting couple (meeting of lovers); man kneeling before a lady; Cupid aiming with bow and arrow; lady with arrow piercing her heart; couples holding hands; trees; dog.
Longhurst 1929: Italy, late 14th century or early 15th century.
Williamson and Davies 2014: Italy (probably Venice), c. 1400.
Attribution
Unknown
Polychromy - Gilding
Traces of gilding and polychromy: gold (background), red.
Reverse
Carved on both sides.
Provenance
Collection of Louis Fidel Debruge-Duménil (b. 1788, d. 1838): Debruge-Duménil sale, Paris, 12 March 1850, lot 1516. Collection of Prince Petr Soltykoff (b. c. 1801, d. 1889): sale, Paris, Drouot, 8-10, 15-17, 22-24, 29 April and 1 May 1861, lot 365; purchased by Jacob; in the possession of John Webb (b. 1799, d. 1880), London, by 1862: purchased from him by the Museum in 1867.
Bibliography
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. 146.
Inventory of Art Objects acquired in the Year 1867. Inventory of the Objects in the Art Division of the Museum at South Kensington, arranged according to the dates of their acquisition (London, 1868), I, p. 8.
W. Maskell, Ivories Ancient and Mediaeval in the South Kensington Museum (London, 1872), p. 87.
G. Semper, Zeitschrift des Ferdinandeums für Tirol und Vorarlberg, III, vol. 40 (1896), p. 176, no. x.4.
F. Winter, Die Kämmer aller Zeiten (1906), pl. 39, no. 114.
R. Koechlin, Les Ivoires gothiques français (Paris, 1924), I, p. 427.
M. Longhurst, Catalogue of Carvings in Ivory, Victoria and Albert Museum, 2 vols (London, 1927 and 1929), II (1929), p. 68, pl. LVII.
P. Williamson and G. Davies, Medieval Ivory Carvings 1200-1550 (London, 2014), no. 212.
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