Deposition with the Virgin holding Christ's hand; Joseph of Arimathea holding Christ's body; man with pincers removing the nail from Christ's feet; titulus; cross.
Possenti Catalogue 1880: Italian, 14th century.
Mannheim 1907: French, 1st half of the 14th century.
Koechlin 1924: France, end of the 1st third of the 14th century.
Ottawa 1972: Paris atelier, end of 1st quarter of the 14th century.
Paris 1997: Paris, c. 1320-1340.
Museum's opinion 2012: French (probably Paris), c. 1320-1340.
Attribution
Unknown
Polychromy - Gilding
Traces of gilding and polychromy.
Reverse
Flat and smooth.
Comments
This plaque is part of a series of Passion carvings that are now dispersed among Antwerp, Oslo, Paris, London, and New York. The entire sequence was probably once set in an architectural frame, forming an altar frontal.
The Two Holy Women in the Victoria and Albert Museum (A.99-1927) may have been part of the same ensemble (Gaborit-Chopin in Paris 1981).
Provenance
Collection of Count Girolamo Possenti de Fabriano, Florence. Collection of Rodolphe Hirsch Kann, Paris. Bligny collection, Paris. Collection of Georges Hoentschel (b. 1855, d. 1915), Paris. 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
J. O. Westwood, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Fictile Ivories in the South Kensington Museum (London, 1876), Appendix, p. 374.
Catalogue d'Objets d'Art et de curiosité formant la collection de feu M. le Comte Girolamo Possenti de Fabriano (Rome, 1880), no. 41, p. 7, ill. pl. 8.
R. Koechlin, 'Les retables français en ivoire du commencement du XIVe', in Monuments Piot 13 (1906), p. 67 ff., fig. 2.
J. Mannheim, Catalogue of the Rodolphe Kann collection. Objets d'art (Paris, 1907), I, no. 18.
A. Pératé, Collections Georges Hoentschel. Ivoires, orfèvrerie religieuse, pierres (Paris, 1911), I, no. 33, pl. XXVI.
R. Koechlin, 'Les Diptyques à décor de roses', in Gazette des Beaux-Arts (1918), p. 234.
R. Koechlin, Les Ivoires gothiques français (Paris, 1924), I, pp. 142-144; II, no. 227; III, pl. LIX.
The Pierpont Morgan Wing: a handbook by Joseph Breck and Meyric Rogers (New York, 1929), p. 32, ill.
J. J. Rorimer and W. H Forsyth, 'The Medieval galleries', in Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin XII (1954), p. 143.
Art and the Courts: France and England from 1259 to 1328, exhibition catalogue, Ottawa, The National Gallery of Canada, 28 April-2 July, 1972, I, pp. 158-159. no. 79; II, pl. 104.
Les Fastes du Gothique: le siècle de Charles V, ed. by F. Baron, exhibition catalogue, Paris, Grand Palais, 1981, no. 137.
D. Gaborit-Chopin, 'Nicodème travesti. La Descente de Croix d'ivoire du Louvre', in Revue de l'Art 81 (1988), pp. 31-44.
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. 20, pp. 151-152.
P. Williamson and G. Davies, Medieval Ivory Carvings 1200-1550 (London, 2014), in relation to no. 35.
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