Gothic Ivories Project | Openwork diptych, 3 registers (colonnettes; ajouré) (Front, broken fragment)

Height: 125mm (with frame)
Width: 174mm (with frame)
Depth: 15mm (with frame)
Weight: 279.9g (with frame)

Wing, left
Register 1: Assumption (Virgin in clouds borne to Heaven by angels). Coronation of the Virgin. God the Father taking the soul of the Virgin to Heaven.
Register 2: Death of the Virgin (Dormition).
Register 3: Nativity; Adoration of the Magi.
Wing, right
Register 1: Last Judgement with Resurrection of the Dead (Christ in Glory); angels blowing trumpets; Virgin Mary and saint John the Baptist kneeling.
Register 2: Annunciation. Resurrection; two angels standing on the tomb; three soldiers asleep.
Register 3: Christ appears to three unidentified female saints.
Flamboyant tracery. Musician angels in niches (psaltery; rebec).

Dalton 1913-1914: Northern French or Flemish, end of 14th or early 15th century.
London 1923: Northern French or Flemish, late 14th century.
Koechlin 1924: French, mid 15th century.
Leeuwenberg 1969: Northern French or Flemish, late 18th or early 19th century.
Museum's opinion 2011: Northern French or Flemish, late 18th or early 19th century.

Attribution
Master of the Forgeries of the Elegant Figures (Leeuwenberg 1969)

Hinges
Modern hinges

Reverse
Flat and smooth. Set in a modern metal frame.

Object Condition
Part of surrounding architecture broken off, some figures damaged.

Provenance
Collection of Charles Borradaile, Brighton (at least fro0m 1923); British Museum, by bequest, 1969.

Bibliography
O. M. Dalton, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of London, XXVI (London, 1913-1914), pp. 14 - 15, fig. 6.
Catalogue of an Exhibition of Carvings in Ivory, exhibition catalogue, London, Burlington Fine Arts Club, 1923, no. 151.
R. Koechlin, Les Ivoires gothiques français (Paris, 1924), I, p. 324; II, no. 876.
J. Leeuwenberg, 'Early Nineteenth-Century Gothic Ivories', in Aachener Kunstblätter 39 (1969), p. 139-140, fig. 45.
J. Warren, Medieval and Renaissance Sculpture in the Ashmolean Museum, 3 vols (Oxford, 2014), Vol. 2: Sculptures in Stone, Clay, Ivory, Bone and Wood, pp. 594-5, in relation to no. 179.

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