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Game box (boîte à jeux)

Game box (boîte à jeux)
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Subject
Secular. Musicians. Hunting scene.

Repository Institution
artmuseum.princeton.edu

To purchase an image
artmuseum.princeton.edu


Princeton, Princeton University Art Museum

Y1959-11

Bone;tortoiseshell (dark squares);brass (lock and hinges;wood (core)

Height: 97mm
Width: 157mm
Depth: 140mm

Lid
Register 1: female musician playing the harp; fountain; man blowing a horn.
Register 2: youth with a hawk on his wrist; tree surrounded by a woven fence; lady with a lure; ladies wearing pointed headdresses (henins).
Body, front
Wild men with clubs.
End, right
Archer shooting a stag; hunter blowing a horn; dogs.
Body, back
Lady playing the harp; tree; man blowing a horn.
End, left
Male dancers; female dancer; musician with drum and whistle; dancing jester.
Foliated borders. Crosshatched background.Chequered pattern on the bottom.

Lawrence 1969: France, third quarter (?) of the 15th century.
Randall 1993: French (Alsace) or German (Black Forest), 1440-1470.
Detroit 1997: probably German (Upper Rhine), c. 1440-1470.


Attribution
Unknown

Polychromy - Gilding
Extensive traces of polychromy and gilding: gold (background and foliate scrolls), red, blue and brown (costumes), green (trees).

Reverse
Carved on all sides.

Comments
Sliding drawer below the lock at the front (only known example with this feature). Part of group related to a box featuring coats of arms of German families from the region of Baden-Baden and Strasbourg (see C. Beard, 'Heraldry', in Connoisseur, 96 (1935), pp. 238-239.

Provenance
Bought from the Collector's Corner, New York, in 1959 thanks to the National Forge Foundation, at the behest of Duane Wilder, Class of 1951.

Bibliography
Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University, XX, no. 1 (1961), p. 27.
The Waning Middle Ages, ed. by J. L. Schrader, exhibition catalogue, Lawrence, University of Kansas, 1969, p. 72, no. 86, pl. XIX.
A. St. Clair, E. Parker McLachlan, The Carver's Art: Medieval Sculpture in Ivory, Bone, and Horn, exhibition catalogue, New Brunswick, Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, 1989, no. 25.
R. H. Randall, The Golden Age of Ivory: Gothic Ivory Carvings in North American Collections (New York, 1993), no. 195, pl. 17.
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, no. 74.


Image

© Princeton University Art Museum. Museum purchase, gift of the National Forge Foundation at the behest of Duane Wilder, Class of 1951.

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