God of Love in a tree throwing arrows at lovers; lady holding a chaplet; lady wearing a chaplet pierced with small holes; youth with a hawk on his wrist; youth feeding a hawk.
Corner terminals: four crouching monsters.
Westwood 1876: France, 14th century.
Griggs 1904-1907: France 14th century.
Koechlin 1924: France, 1st half of the 14th century.
Longhurst 1929: France, 1st half of the 14th century.
Williamson and Davies 2014: French (Paris), c.1300-20.
Attribution
Unknown
Reverse
Back turned with a depression for (missing) mirror.
Object Condition
Later holes in the upper part.
Missing: part of the tail of all monsters except the upper left monster; head of the lower left monster.
Reverse stained brown (perhaps residue of glue).
Provenance
In the possession of John Webb (b. 1799, d. 1880), London, by 1862: purchased from him by the museum in 1867.
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, 1862), no. 137.
W. Maskell, Ivories Ancient and Mediaeval in the South Kensington Museum (London, 1872), p. 84.
J. O. Westwood, Fictile Ivories in the South Kensington Museum (London, 1876), no. 880 (`73.333).
W. Griggs, Portfolio of Ivories [London, 1904-1907], pt. XXVII.
R. Koechlin, 'Le Dieu d'Amour', in Gazette des Beaux-Arts II (1921), pp. 279, 282, 285.
R. Koechlin, Les Ivoires gothiques français (Paris, 1924), I, pp. 400, 402; II, no. 1068.
M. Longhurst, Catalogue of Carvings in Ivory, Victoria and Albert Museum, 2 vols (London, 1927 and 1929), II (1929), p. 47, pl. XLIII.
J. Walworth, 'Tristan in Medieval Art', in Tristan and Isolde: a Casebook, ed. by J. T. Grimberg (New York and London, 1995), pp. 278-299 (fig. 11).
B. Roy, ‘Archéologie de l’amour courtois; note sur les miroirs d’ivoire’, in Miroirs et jeux de miroirs dans la littérature médiévale, ed. by F. Pomel (Rennes, 2003), p. 239, fig. 11.
P. Mae Carns, 'Having the last laugh: the fabliau of 'The knight with the red robe' in carved ivory', in The Burlington Magazine, vol. CLII, no. 1292 (November 2010), p. 714, fig. 4.
L. Lam, ‘Les valves de miroir gothiques: sources littéraires et iconographie’, in Zeitschrift fur Kunstgeschichte 74 (2011), p. 302, note 27.
P. Williamson and G. Davies, Medieval Ivory Carvings 1200-1550 (London, 2014), no. 198.
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