Attribution
Unknown

Polychromy - Gilding
Traces of gilding and polychromy. Stain from binding medium for paint or gilding on the throne with painted tracery).

Reverse
Carved in the round.

Object Condition
Missing: right forearm of the Virgin, head of the bird; Christ's right thumb, left foot, and right toe; upper part of the Virgin's crown; head of the dove.
Part of the veil of the Virgin damaged.
Original hole for attachment in the back of a large hole for the nerve in the centre of the base.

Provenance
Octave Homberg collection (d. 1907), Paris; by descent to his son, Octave Homberg, Paris: sold, Galerie George Petit, Paris, 3-5 June 1931, lot 128, to M. Brimo. Private collection, Paris (by 1947). E. and M. Kofler-Truniger, Lucerne (by 1964). Blumka Gallery, New York (by 1971): bought by the Art Institute in 1971, thanks to the Kate S. Buckingham Endowment.

Bibliography
R. Koechlin, Les Ivoires gothiques français (Paris, 1924), I, p. 53; II, no. 11; III, pl. IVbis.
L. Grodecki, Ivoires français (Paris, 1947), p. 82, pl. 21.
H. Schnitzler, F. Volbach, P. Bloch, Skulpturen, Elfenbein, Perlmutter, Stein, Holz Europäisches Mittelalter, Sammlung E. und M. Kofler-Truniger, 2 vols (Lucerne, 1964), no. S.31.
R. Suckale, Studien zu Stilbildung und Stilwandel der Madonnenstatuen der Ile-de-France zwischen 1230 und 1300 (Munich, 1971), pp. 70-72, pp. 86-87.
M. Seidel, 'Die Elfenbeinmadonna im Domschatz zu Pisa', in Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, 16 (1972), pp. 1-50 (pp. 28-29, 50, fig. 31).
Art Institute of Chicago, Art Institute of Chicago Annual Report 1971-72 (Chicago, 1973), p. 44.
W. Monroe, 'A French Gothic Ivory of the Virgin and Child', in The Art Institute of Chicago, Museum Studies 9 (1978), pp. 7-29.
C. Little, 'Ivoires et art gothique', in Revue de l'art, 46 (1979), pp. 58-67.
R. H. Randall, The Golden Age of Ivory: Gothic Ivory Carvings in North American Collections (New York, 1993), pp. 16-17, 34, pl. 1, no. 1.
J. Tripps, 'Giovanni Pisano e l'influsso francese sulla scultura in Italia', in Il Gotico europeo in Italia (Naples, 1994), pp. 141-152 (fig. 4).
Images in Ivory. Precious Objects of the Gothic Age, ed. by Peter Barnet, exhibition catalogue, Detroit, The Detroit Institute of Arts, and Baltimore, The Walters Art Gallery, 1997, pp. 118-119, no. 2.
D. Gaborit-Chopin, 'Paris ou Amiens? Le Groupe de la Vierge Davillier', in Études d'histoire de l'art offertes à Jacques Thirion, ed. by A. Erlande-Brandenburg and J.-M. Leniaud (Paris, 2001), pp. 85-98.
D. Gaborit-Chopin, Ivoires médiévaux, Ve-XVe siècle (Paris: Musée du Louvre, 2003), p. 276, fig. 93a.