Inv. 71.275
Hawking party; courting couple; lady and youth hawking on horseback; lady wearing a hat with a pointed brim; lady chucking her lover under the chin; youth with a hawk on his wrist; hunter with a spear.
Corner terminals: four crouching monsters.
Westwood 1876: France, 14th century.
Randall 1985 and Museum's opinion 2010: France (Paris), 2nd quarter of the 14th century.
Attribution
Unknown
Reverse
Back turned with a depression for (missing) mirror. Label "13". Three drill holes at top centre.
Object Condition
Upper right corner drilled for attachment. Vertical crack in the centre, in the upper part, caused by a later drilled hole (repaired).
Comments
According to Randall (1985), this composition is based on calendar scenes for the month of May in manuscript calendars. A cast was made of this piece in the 19th century and one of these casts is now Courtauld Institute of Art, Witt and Conway Library, no. 271.
Koechlin confuses another mirror in the Sulzbach collection with this one in Koechlin no. 1027.
Provenance
Collection of Reverend Walter Sneyd (1809, d. 1888), Keele Hall, Staffordshire, until 1888 (exhibited at Manchester in 1857 and Leeds in 1868; a cast in the Victoria and Albert Museum and at the Courtauld Institute of Art): Keele Hall sale, London, 7 July 1902, lot 23. Bought by Henry Walters from Jacques Seligmann in Paris before 1931 (possibly in 1902); Walters Art Museum, 1931, by bequest.
Bibliography
A. Didron, Annales archéologiques, XIX (1859), p. 253.
J. O. Westwood, Fictile Ivories in the South Kensington Museum (London, 1876), no. 859 ('54.79).
R. H. Randall, Masterpieces of Ivory from the Walters Art Gallery (New York, 1985), pp. 226-227, no. 329.
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