Elopement (variation on Attack on the Castle of Love); ladies in a tower; knight helping a lady escape from the castle; knights in armour; lovers on a horse; bridge; couple in a boat; musician playing the psaltery; trees.
Corner terminals: four crouching monsters with long wavy tail.
Westwood 1876 and Gatty 1883: France, 14th century.
London 1923: France, 14th century.
Koechlin 1924: France, 1st half of 14th century.
Natanson 1951: France, c. 1340-1350.
Liverpool Ivories 1954: France, 1st half of 14th century.
Gibson 1994 and Museum's opinion 2010: Paris, c. 1320-1340.
Attribution
Unknown
Comments
The elopement could be that of Guinevere and Lancelot (Liverpool 1954). Stylistically related to Baltimore, Walters Art Museum, 71.169 (Randall 1985).
Provenance
Gabor Fejérváry collection; inherited at his death in 1851 by his nephew Ferenc Pulszky; sold to Joseph Mayer in 1855; given by Joseph Mayer to the town of Liverpool in 1867.
Bibliography
E. Henszlmann, Catalogue of the Collection of the Monuments of Art formed by the late Gabriel Fejérváry of Hungary exhibited at the Museum of the Archeological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (London, 1853), no. 673.
F. Pulszky, Catalogue of the Fejérváry Ivories in the Museum of Joseph Mayer, Esq., F.S.A. (Liverpool, 1856), no. 48.
J. B. Waring, Art Treasures of the United Kingdom: Consisting of Examples Selected from the Manchester Treasures Exhibition, 1857 (London, 1858), p. 24 (drawing).
W. Maskell, Ivories Ancient and Mediaeval in the South Kensington Museum (London, 1872), p. 174, no. 23.
J. O. Westwood, Fictile Ivories in the South Kensington Museum (London, 1876), no. 853 ('54.78).
C. T. Gatty, Catalogue of Mediaeval and Later Antiquities contained in the Mayer Museum (Liverpool, 1883), no. 65.
A. M. Cust, The Ivory Workers of the Middle Ages (London, 1902), p. 149, fig. 34.
A. Maskell, Ivories (Connoisseurs Library), (London, 1905), pl. xlviii.1.
P. Nelson, 'The Mediaeval Ivories in the Liverpool Museum II', in The Connoisseur 30 (1911), no. XV.
R. S. Loomis, 'The Allegorical Siege in the Art of the Middle Ages', in American Journal of Archeology, 2nd series, vol. 23, no. 3 (1919), pp. 255-269 (p. 259).
R. Koechlin, 'Le Dieu d'Amour', in Gazette des Beaux-Arts II (1921), p. 294. tbc
Catalogue of an Exhibition of Carvings in Ivory, exhibition catalogue, London, Burlington Fine Arts Club, 1923, no. 142, pl. XL.
R. Koechlin, Les Ivoires gothiques français (Paris, 1924), I, pp. 409, 442, 489; II, no. 1105; III, pl. CLXXXVI.
J. Natanson, Gothic Ivories of the 13th and 14th Centuries (London, 1951), p. 37, fig. 46.
Liverpool Ivories: Special Exhibition, exhibition catalogue, London, British Museum, 1954, no. 33.
Medieval and Early Renaissance Treasures in the North West, exhibition catalogue, Manchester, 1976, no. 116.
R. H. Randall, Masterpieces of Ivory from the Walters Art Gallery (New York, 1985), p. 222 (in relation to no. 322).
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. 40.
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. 66, 231, fig. V-1.
L'art au temps des rois maudits: Philippe le Bel et ses fils (1285-1328), exhibition catalogue, Paris, Grand Palais, 1998, no. 95.
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