A & A spacer courtauld institute of art
login
quick search advanced search browse temp folder

Chess piece (Front)

Chess piece (Front)
enlarge image zoom image

Front

Back

Front

Subject
Secular.

Repository Institution
www.ago.net

To purchase an image
www.ago.net


Toronto, The Thomson Collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO)

29123

Ivory

Height: 62mm
Width: 45mm
Depth: 28.5mm
Weight: 43g

Seated queen feeding a squirrel; throne.

Paris 1954: France, late 13th century.
Lowden 2008: Germany, c. 1350-1400. Radiocarbon dating produced a date of 690+- 30 years BP, i.e. a 95.4% probability of a date for the ivory within the range AD 1270-1330 (61.6%) or 1350-1390 (33.8%).
Museum's opinion 2008: North French (?), late 14th-early 15th century.


Attribution
Unknown

Reverse
Carved in the round.
Back decorated with a pattern of diagonals enclosing a fleur-de-lys in a diamond-shaped space.

Object Condition
Missing: top of her staff; left side of the throne; crown partly broken.

Comments
Similar to a king seated on a similar throne in the Metropolitan Museum (formerly Kofler-Truniger collection, no. S37). Weight: 43 g.

Provenance
Collection of P. Antonini (in 1954). Collection of Alexandrine de Rothschild. Thomson collection, Toronto: acquired, Sotheby's, London, 18 May 1967, lot 22, via Hermann Baer; since 2008, The Thomson Collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), Toronto.

Bibliography
Chefs d'oeuvre de la curiosité du monde, exhibition catalogue, Paris, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, 10 June-30 September 1954, no. 267, pl. 121.
J. Cherry, J. Lowden, Medieval Ivories and Works of Art: The Thomson Collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto, 2008), cat. 42.


Image

The Thomson Collection © 2009, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto.

All images on this website are made available exclusively for scholarly and educational purposes and may not be used commercially.

spacer
spacer spacer spacer spacer
Please remember to acknowledge any use of the site in publications and lectures as: 'Gothic Ivories Project at The Courtauld Institute of Art, London, www.gothicivories.courtauld.ac.uk', followed by the date you accessed the site.