Seated Virgin and Child; Christ seated on the Virgin's left knee; Christ seated frontally; Christ in long robe; blessing gesture; architecture evoking a church; quatrefoils; towers; tiled roof; row of blind arches.
Griggs 1904-1907: France, 13th century.
Koechlin 1924: France, 2nd half of 13th century.
Longhurst 1929: France, 2nd half of the 13th century.
Natanson 1951: France, c. 1250-1270.
Giusti 1982: Northern France, c. 1260-1270.
Williamson and Davies 2014: Northern French, about 1250.
Attribution
Unknown
Hinges
Traces of two ring hinges on either side.
Reverse
Flat and smooth. Nerve canal visible.
Object Condition
Missing: left column; central spire (crosshatched surface of the upper side of the central tower). Front of the throne abraded.
Two holes have been drilled on either side (all but one ruptured) to take ring hinges.
Comments
Two large holes on the underside.
Provenance
In the possession of John Webb (b. 1799, d. 1880), London, by 1862; on loan to the Museum from 1867: purchased from him by the Museum in 1871.
Bibliography
Catalogue of the Special Exhibition of Works of Art of the Mediaeval, Renaissance, and more recent periods on loan at the South Kensington Museum, June 1862, revised edition, exhibition catalogue (London, 1863), no. 70.
W. Maskell, Ivories Ancient and Mediaeval in the South Kensington Museum (London, 1872), no. 382-71.
W. Griggs, Portfolio of Ivories [London, 1904-1907], pt. XVII.
R. Koechlin, Les Ivoires gothiques français (Paris, 1924), I, pp. 65, 201; II, no. 31.
M. Longhurst, Catalogue of Carvings in Ivory, Victoria and Albert Museum, 2 vols (London, 1927 and 1929), II (1929), p. 9, pl. IV.
J. Natanson, Gothic Ivories of the 13th and 14th Centuries (London, 1951), p. 32, fig. 13.
P. Giusti, 'Une Madonna in avorio nel Museo Duca di Martina. Plastica minore e scultura monumentale nella Francia del XIII secolo', in Bollettino d'Arte, 67 (1982), pp. 77-86 (fig. 10).
J. Warren, Medieval and Renaissance Sculpture in the Ashmolean Museum, 3 vols (Oxford, 2014), Vol. 2: Sculptures in Stone, Clay, Ivory, Bone and Wood, p. 552, in relation to no. 157.
P. Williamson and G. Davies, Medieval Ivory Carvings 1200-1550 (London, 2014), no. 42.
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