Dalton 1926: English (Exeter), mid 14th century.
London 1987: English (Exeter), c. 1330-1340.
Straford 1991: English (Exeter), circa 1340.
Museum's opinion 2011: English (Exeter), circa 1325-1350.
Attribution
Unknown
Hinges
Traces of three missing hinges on either side.
Reverse
Flat and smooth.
Object Condition
Central panel damaged, large fragment missing including the Virgin in the Crucifixion scene and the left side of the arch framing the lower register.
Provenance
Made for John Grandisson, Bishop of Exeter (b. 1327, d. 1369), evidence for this is given by his partly-effaced coat of arms (before 1358). Purchased by the British Museum with a contribution from the Art Fund from Miss Seaborne, Southampton, 1926.
Bibliography
M. H. Longhurst, English Ivories (1916), p. 47.
O. M. Dalton, 'A Fourteenth-Century English Ivory Triptych', in Burlington Magazine 68 (1926), pp. 74-83.
D. A. Porter, Ivory Carvings in Later Medieval England 1200-1400 (unpublished PhD thesis, State University of New York at Binghamton, 1974), no. 51.
Age of Chivalry: Art in Plantagenet England 1200-1400, ed. by J. J. G. Alexander and Paul Binski, exhibition catalogue, London, Royal Academy of Arts, 1987, no. 596 (N. Stratford).
N. Stratford, 'Bishop Grandisson and the Visual Arts', in Exeter Cathedral: A Celebration, ed. by M. Swanton (Exeter, 1991), pp. 144-155, fig. 218.
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