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Lid (fragment of a casket), 1 register (coffret) (Front)

Lid (fragment of a casket), 1 register (coffret) (Front)
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Front

Subject
Secular. Courtly love. Romance.

Repository Institution
www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk

To purchase an image
www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk


Liverpool, National Museums Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery

M 8052

Ivory

Height: 118mm
Width: 213mm
Depth: 7mm

Scene 1: Elopement (variation on Attack on the Castle of Love); lovers on a horse; couples watching from the castle battlements; offering of a chaplet (gift of a chaplet); youth chucking his lover under the chin; bridge; youth in a boat.
Scene 2: Tournament; ladies (including a queen) and youths observing the jousting knights in armour from a balcony; lady with a dog; two youths blowing trumpets; horses; shields with flowers.
Scene 3: Attack on the Castle of Love; knight in armour and ladies watching from the castle battlements; catapult throwing flowers; knights in armour assaulting the castle; ladies throwing flowers from the battlements; knight climbing a ladder.


Koechlin Number: 1291

Gatty 1883: French, 14th century.
London 1923: French, 14th century.
Koechlin 1924: France, 1st half of the 14th century.
Liverpool Ivories 1954: French, 1st half of 14th century.
Gibson 1994 and Museum's opinion 2010: French, 1st half of the 14th century.


Attribution
Unknown

Object Condition
Missing: metal handle (raised discs of ivory where it was attached), and metal fittings; ivory upper edge (replaced); upper right corner broken.

Comments
Stylistically and iconographically related to six other Parisian caskets (see Koechlin 1281-1287). Also related to Cleveland Museum of Art, John L. Severance Fund, 78.39 (Gibson 1994).

Provenance
Joseph Mayer collection (by 1855): given by Joseph Mayer to the town of Liverpool in 1867.

Bibliography
J. B. Waring, Art Treasures of the United Kingdom: Consisting of Examples Selected from the Manchester Treasures Exhibition, 1857 (London, 1858), pl. IV.
W. Maskell, Ivories Ancient and Mediaeval in the South Kensington Museum (London, 1872), p. 174.
C. T. Gatty, Catalogue of Mediaeval and Later Antiquities contained in the Mayer Museum (Liverpool, 1883), no. 67.
J. Carter, Specimens of Ancient Sculpture and Painting now Remaining in England, 2nd edition by D. Turner, S. R. Meyrick, J. Britton (London, 1887), pp. 146-147, pl. cxiii-cxiv.
P. Nelson, 'The Mediaeval Ivories in the Liverpool Museum II', in The Connoisseur 30 (1911), no. XI.
Catalogue of an Exhibition of Carvings in Ivory, exhibition catalogue, London, Burlington Fine Arts Club, 1923, no. 138, pl. XXXVIII.
R. Koechlin, Les Ivoires gothiques français (Paris, 1924), I, pp. 489, 490; II, no. 1291.
Gothic Art in Europe, exhibition catalogue, London, Burlington Fine Arts Club, 1936, no. 112.
Liverpool Ivories: Special Exhibition, exhibition catalogue, London, British Museum, 1954, no. 34.
Medieval and Early Renaissance Treasures in the North West, exhibition catalogue, Manchester, 1976, no. 117.
W. D. Wixom, 'Eleven Additions to the Medieval Collection', in Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art (1979), pp. 86-151 (pp. 110-126).
R. H. Randall, Masterpieces of Ivory from the Walters Art Gallery (New York, 1985), no. 324-325.
M. Gibson, 'Through the Looking Glass: a Gothic Ivory Mirror Case in the Liverpool Museum', in The Chaucer Review 21 (1986), pp. 213-216.
M. Gibson, The Liverpool Ivories: late antique and medieval ivory and bone carving in Liverpool Museum and the Walker Art Gallery (London, 1994), no. 41.
T. Hunt and V. Whitfield, Art Treasures in Manchester: 150 years on, exhibition catalogue, London and Manchester Art gallery, 2007-2008, p. 88.


Image

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