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Panel (fragment of a casket; back; coffret); known as the 'Coffret de l'Académie' (Front)

Panel (fragment of a casket; back; coffret); known as the 'Coffret de l'Académie' (Front)
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Front

Front

Front

Subject
Secular. Hunting scene. Courtly love.

Repository Institution
www.metmuseum.org

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New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art

2003.131.2

Ivory

Height: 110mm
Width: 308mm
Depth: 5mm

Hunting scene; ladies watching from the castle battlements; hunter on horseback blowing a horn; attendant on foot blowing a horn; lady and youth hawking on horseback; lady with a hawk on her wrist; youth holding a bow; lady swinging a lure for hawks; hunters thrusting their swords into stags; dogs attacking a stag; arrow in the stag's back side; dog pursuing a hare; hare disappearing into a hole; birds in trees; fountain decorated with monsters.


Koechlin Number: 1290

Koechlin 1924: France, 1st half of the 14th century.
Museum's opinion 2012: Paris, c. 1350.


Attribution
Unknown

Reverse
Flat and smooth, with a slight bevel to accommodate the side panels of the casket. Crosshatching on the beveled edges.
Glued label with ink inscription (possibly 18th century): 'Ce morceau est aussi rare par l'exécution qu'il est surprenant par le sujet qu'il représente; il est d'un habile sculpteur du XIVe siècle, qui a coopéré à la décoration de plusieurs églises de Paris'; and in pencil: 'Gravé et plus tard expliqué par M. de Boze, t. 19 [sic] des Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions'.
Handwritten inscription: 'Pere Zacharia jesuite paye tbc.... de la gravure d'une chasse sur yvoire... tbc'.
Two labels with inscription: '100'.

Object Condition
Numerous holes, for metal fittings (now lost).

Comments
This casket is known from an eighteenth- century engraving that shows the conclusion of the hunt, with the stag's head being presented to courtly figures. The casket was complete in the 18th century, but this is the only surviving panel (see Gaborit-Chopin 2003, figs. 174a-c for reproductions of engravings made after this casket).

Provenance
Collection of Claude Gros de Boze (until 1753 when he dies), Paris (in 1745; casket dismantled but panels still together). Collection of Count Franz Wilhelm von Oettingen-Balderen, Cologne (until 1798). Collection of Count Ludwig zu Oettingen-Wallerstein (until 1870); Princes of Oettingen-Wallerstein, by descent; bought by the Museum in 2003.

Bibliography
Lévesque de Ravalière, 'Explications de quelques bas-reliefs en ivoire', in Histoire de l'Académie royale des inscriptions et belles-lettres, ed. C. Gros de Boze, C. Le Beau, B.-J. Dacier (Paris, 1710-1843), vol. XVIII, (1753), pp. 322-323, 5 plates facing p. 322.
J. B. Passeri, Monumenta sacra eburnea, in F. Gori, Thesaurus Veterum Diptychorum Consularium et Ecclesiasticorum, 3 vols, (Florence, 1759), III, pl. XXII.
Seroux d'Agincourt, Histoire de l'Art par les Monuments (Paris, 1823), IV, pl. XXIX.
A. Lenoir, Monuments des Arts Libéraux (Paris, 1840), pl. XXIII.
A. von Eye and J. von Falcke, Kunst und Leben der Vorzeit (Nuremberg, 1858), pl. XLXVIII.
R. Koechlin, 'Quelques ivoires gothiques français connus antérieurement au XIXe siècle', in Revue de l'Art Chrétien 41 (1911), pp. 387-402, fig. 21.
R. Koechlin, Les Ivoires gothiques français (Paris, 1924), I, pp. 37, 507; II, no. 1290; III, pl. CCXX.
L. Grodecki, Ivoires français (Paris, 1947), pp. 118-119, pl. XLII.
D. Gaborit-Chopin, Nouvelles acquisitions du département des objets d'art, 1980-1984 (Paris, 1985), no. 6, pp. 32-35, fig. 6d.
P. M. Shoppe, Reading Romances. The Production and Reception of French Gothic Secular Ivory Caskets in the Context of Late Medieval Literary Practices (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, 2000), esp. pp. 47-74.
D. Gaborit-Chopin, Ivoires médiévaux, Ve-XVe siècle (Paris: Musée du Louvre, 2003), pp. 418-419 (esp. figs. 174a-c).
C. Little, 'Recent Acquisitions', Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin (Fall 2003), pp. 12-13 (with ill.).
P. Barnet and N. Wu, The Cloisters: Medieval Art and Architecture (New York, 2005), no. 60, p. 97 (with ill.).
P. Barnet, 'Recent Acquisitions (1999-2008) of Medieval Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Cloisters, New York', in The Burlington Magazine 150 (2008), pp. 793-800 (p. 797, fig. XIV).


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