Winged God of Love in a tree throwing arrows at lovers; courting couples (meeting of lovers); youth with arrow piercing his heart; youth kneeling before his lover.
Pointed trefoils.
Corner terminals: four crouching monsters.
Molinier 1904: French, 14th century.
Koechlin 1924: France, 2nd half of the 14th century.
Randall 1997: French, 14th century.
Attribution
Unknown
Reverse
Back turned with a depression for (missing) mirror.
Blue and white label with inscription 'o. [?] 139'. Blue and white label with inscription: '75 Boite de miroir a. 14'.
Comments
The other half of this mirror case is probably Koechlin 1030, also in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (17.190.247).
Provenance
Collection of Baron Albert Oppenheim, Cologne (by 1900): sale, 1906; collection of J. Pierpont Morgan (d. 1913), London and New York; estate of J. Pierpont Morgan (1913-1917); gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1917.
Bibliography
Exposition Universelle de 1900, Catalogue illustré Officiel de l'Exposition Rétrospective de l'Art Français (Paris, 1900), no. 157 (?).
Collection du Baron Oppenheim. Tableaux et objets d'art. Catalogue précédé d'une introduction par Émile Molinier (Paris, 1904), p. 33, no. 75.
R. Koechlin, 'Le Dieu d'Amour', in Gazette des Beaux-Arts II (1921), p. 279.
R. Koechlin, Les Ivoires gothiques français (Paris, 1924), I, pp. 367, 400, 401; II, no. 1072.
Songs of Glory, exhibition catalogue, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma Museum of Art, 1985, no. 86, pp. 243-244.
R. H. Randall Jr., 'Games on a Medieval Ivory', in Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University, 56 (1997), pp. 3-9 (p. 5, fig. 7).
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