Attack on the Castle of Love; mock tournament; courting couples (meeting of lovers); ladies and the God of Love defending the Castle of Love; winged God of Love throwing arrows at lovers; two heralds in trees blowing trumpets; lady crowning a herald with a chaplet; knights in armour assaulting the castle; ladies throwing flowers from the battlements; knight with a crossbow throwing flowers; couples embracing; knight chucking his lover under the chin; ladies pouring a basket of roses on the attackers; ladies and knights on horseback, jousting with stems of flowers; portcullis; shields with flowers.
Koechlin 1924: France, 1st half of the 14th century.
Museum's opinion 2012: Paris, c. 1320-1340.
Attribution
Unknown
Reverse
Back threaded at the edge, suggesting that the disk may have been the cover of a circular box.
Object Condition
Part of the upper edge is missing.
Provenance
Collection of Count Ludwig zu Oettingen-Wallerstein (probably before 1824, until 1870); Princes of Oettingen-Wallerstein, by descent; bought by the Museum in 2003.
Bibliography
P. Barnet, 'Recent Acquisitions (1999-2008) of Medieval Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Cloisters, New York', in The Burlington Magazine 150 (2008), pp. 793-800 (p. 797, fig. XII).
A. von Eye and J. von Falcke, Kunst und Leben der Vorzeit (Nuremberg, 1858), I, pl. XLVI.
C. Becker, J. H. von Hefner-Alteneck, Kunstwerke und Geräthschaften des Mittelalters und der Renaissance (Frankfurt, 1863), II, pl. 41.
Dr. Kuhn, Katalog für die Ausstellung der Werke älterer Meister (Munich, [1876]), Part 2, Katalog der Kunst und Kunstindustrie-Ausstellung alter und neuer deutscher Meister, pl. LXXXI.
Unserer Väter Werke, exhibition catalogue, Munich, Kunstgewerbeverein, 1876, no. 1112 and pl. LXXXI.
J. O. Westwood, Fictile Ivories in the South Kensington Museum (London, 1876), Appendix, p. 464.
J. von Hefner-Alteneck, Trachten (Frankfurt, 1879), III, pl. 161.
G. Grupp, Kulturgeschichte des Mittelalters (Stuttgart, 1892), II, p. 405.
O. Pelka, Elfenbein (Berlin, 1920), p. 212.
R. Koechlin, 'Le Dieu d'Amour', in Gazette des Beaux-Arts II (1921), p. 289.
R. Koechlin, Les Ivoires gothiques français (Paris, 1924), I, pp. 407, 408, 489; II, no. 1095.
G. Grupp, Kulturgeschichte des Mittelalters (Paderborn, 1925), V, p. 15.
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, p. 231.
L'art au temps des rois maudits: Philippe le Bel et ses fils (1285-1328), exhibition catalogue, Paris, Grand Palais, 1998, p. 159.
'Recent Acquisitions', in Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin (Fall 2003), p. 12 (with ill.).
P. Barnet and N. Wu, The Cloisters: Medieval Art and Architecture (New York, 2005), no. 59, p. 96.
P. Barnet, 'Medieval Europe', in Philippe de Montebello and The Metropolitan Museum of Art: 1977-2008, ed. by J. R. Houghton et al. (New York, 2009), pp. 24, 27, fig. 39.
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