Gothic Ivories Project | Casket with arches, 2 registers (coffret; frise d'arcatures)

Ivory;gilt copper (original fittings, strap mounts ending in fleur-de-lis and decorated with flowers).

Romance of Floire and Blancheflor (Blanchefleur)
Lid
Register 1: courting couple (meeting of lovers); couple holding hands (Floire and Blancheflor?). Couple; lady raising her hand in speech or protest. Couple; lady raising her hand in speech or protest. Couple embracing outside a castle.
Register 2: offering of a crown. Lady crowning her kneeling lover with a wreath. Couple embracing. Offering of a wreath.
Body, front
Register 1: lady raising her hand in speech or protest (possibly Floire telling her that he must go away to school). Parting of Floire and Blancheflor (on either side of the lock). A slave trader who will buy Blancheflor arrives at the castle; dagger; belt.
Register 2: couple holding hands. Lady standing outside a castle (Blancheflor?). Couple holding hands. Offering of a flower.
End, right
Register 1: lady standing outside a castle (possibly Blancheflor in the Emir's palace). Bearded man hiding behind a tree to observe a couple (the Emir observing Floire and Blancheflor?); couple embracing; trees.
Register 2: lady hiding behind a tree to observe a couple (Gloris, friend of Blancheflor, observing Floire and Blancheflor?); couple holding hands (Gloris and the Emir, who eventually marry).
Body, back
Register 1: Blancheflor standing outside a castle (possibly evoking the sale of Blancheflor to the slave trader). Couple holding hands. Gift scene? (possibly slave trader buying Blancheflor in exchange for a cup). Couple embracing (?).
Register 2: couple holding hands. Bearded man behind a tree; man looking down from the battlements (possibly the Emir in Egypt). Gift of a wreath (offering of a wreath). Floire holding a cup, arriving at a castle.
End, left
Register 1: bearded man hiding behind a tree to observe a couple ((the Emir observing Floire and Blancheflor?). Couple embracing; horse (Floire and Blancheflor).
Register 2: bearded man observing a lady (possibly Emir in his castle, watching Blancheflor); youth (Floire?) playing chess, observed from the battlements by a woman (Blancheflor?).
Pointed trefoils in the spandrels.

Molinier 1890: French, end of the 14th century.
Koechlin 1912 and 1924: France, 2nd half of the 14th century.
Weller 1990: Northern France, possibly Arras, c. 1340-1360.
Randall 1993: North French or Flemish, 3rd quarter of the 14th century.
Museum's opinion 2011: French, c. 1330-1350.

Attribution
Atelier of the Boxes (Randall 1989)

Reverse
Carved on all sides.

Object Condition
Deep horizontal crack across the upper part and lower part of the lid and of the back panel, and across the lower part of the front panel.
Bottom panel also broken.

Comments
The tale focuses on the passionate love between a Spanish Muslim prince and a French Christian slave. It was written c. 1150 in Northern France and survives in four different manuscripts, two of which are contemporaneous with the box: Paris, BnF, Fr. 375 and Paris, BnF, Fr. 1447. See Carns 2011 for summary of the story and more details. The inside of the casket is lined with paper covered in gesso and painted silver with red scrolls and the letters 'IHS' (alterations probably dating to the 17th century, according to Randall 1993). The bottom is cut with a series of bracket feet.

Provenance
Collection of Hollingworth Magniac, Coleworth House, Bedfordshire. Collection of Frédéric Spitzer, Paris: his sale, Chevallier and Mannheim, Paris, 17 April 1893, lot 139. Collection of Emile Baboin, Lyon. Bought from Raphael Stora, New York, in 1950 thanks to the Edward Drummond Libbey Endowment.

Bibliography
La Collection Spitzer (Paris, 1890), I, no. 104 (E. Molinier).
R. Koechlin, Ivoires gothiques: Collection Emile Baboin (Lyon, 1912), no. 29.
R. Koechlin, Les Ivoires gothiques français (Paris, 1924), I, p. 522; II, no. 1313; III, pl. CCXXVII.
R. H. Randall, 'Medieval Ivories in the Romance tradition', in Gesta, 28 (1989), pp. 30-40 [p. 38].
T. L. Weller, The Illustration of the Medieval Romance Floire et Blanchefleur on an ivory box in the Toledo Museum of Art, unpublished MA thesis, Michigan State University, 1990.
R. H. Randall, The Golden Age of Ivory: Gothic Ivory Carvings in North American Collections (New York, 1993), no. 194.
R. H. Putney, Medieval Art, Medieval People: The Cloister Gallery of the Toledo Museum of Art (Toledo, 2002), pp. 48-49, fig. 41.
Toledo Museum of Art Masterworks (Toledo, 2009), p. 110 (with ill.).
P. M. Carns, 'Floire et Blancheflor: Gothic Secular Ivories and the Arts of Memory', in Studies in Iconography, 32 (2011), pp. 121-154.

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