Gothic Ivories Project | Diptych, 3 registers, bands of rosettes (décor de roses) (Wing, left)

Wing, left
Register 1: Crucifixion with the Virgin and saint John the Evangelist; sun and moon. Resurrection. Ascension.
Register 2: Presentation in the Temple; maid holding a basket of doves brought as offerings. Christ among the Doctors.
Register 3: Annunciation; vase of lilies; dove of the Holy Spirit. Visitation.
Wing, right
Register 1: Pentecost. Coronation of the Virgin; two angels holding candlesticks; two angels swinging censers.
Register 2: Wedding-feast at Cana. Last Supper.
Register 3: Annunciation to the Shepherds. Nativity. Adoration of the Magi.

Calkins 1968: French, 1st half of the 14th century.
Randall 1993: French (Paris), 2nd quarter of the 14th century.
Detroit 1997: French (Paris), ca. 1320-1330.

Attribution
Unknown

Hinges
Two hinges.

Polychromy - Gilding
Traces of gilding and polychromy: gold (patterns on the altar cloth of the Presentation scene), green (lily, trees).

Reverse
'MS' monogram seal on the back for Maurice Sulzbach.

Object Condition
Drilled at the top for hanging (repaired with ivory plugs).

Comments
The inner corners of both wings are cut at an angle (corresponds to the original shape of the ivory block. The edges are crosshatched showing that pieces of ivory were once glued to these two corners to bring each panel to a rectangle.

Provenance
Said to have come from the Cathedral Treasury of Laon. Maurice Sulzbach collection (until 1922): 'MS' monogram seal on the back; Arnold Seligmann, Rey and Co., New York, in 1940: purchased by Robert H. Tannahill, Detroit in 1929; given by him to the Institute in 1940.

Bibliography
The Seventh Loan Exhibition of French Gothic Art of the Thirteenth to Fifteenth Century, exhibition catalogue, Detroit, Detroit Institute of Arts, 1928, no. 56.
W. Heil, 'Kunstwerkeder französischen Gotik: Leihausstellung im Museum zu Detroit', in Pantheon, III, no. 2 (February 1929), p. 74.
F. W. Robinson, 'A French Gothic Ivory Diptych', in Bulletin of the Detroit Institute of Arts', 20 (May 1941), pp. 74-77.
Art Quarterly, 4 (1941), pp. 151-152.
Treasures from the Detroit Institute of Arts, exhibition catalogue, 1966, p. 185.
R. G. Calkins, A Medieval Treasury: An Exhibition of Medieval Art from the Third to the Sixteenth Century, exhibition catalogue, White Museum of Art, Cornell University and M. W. Proctor Institute, Utica, 1968, no. 74.
D. A. Walsh, 'Notes on the Iconography of a Fourteenth-Century Ivory', in Porticus 8 (1984), p. 5.
P. Barnet, 'From the Middle Ages to the Victorians', in Apollo 124, no. 298 (December 1986), p. 39.
R. H. Randall, The Golden Age of Ivory: Gothic Ivory Carvings in North American Collections (New York, 1993), no. 57.
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. 24, pp. 106-107, 157-158, fig. VII-8.
J. Lowden, Medieval and Later Ivories in the Courtauld Gallery (London, 2013), p. 49, fig. 28, in relation to no. 3.

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