Cover tablet 1: Fountain of Youth. Old and young; cripples; old man in a wheelbarrow; couples bathing; man on horseback.
Cover tablet 2: Youth and lady at the gate of the Castle of Love; man in a tower (porter?). Elopement (variation on Attack on the Castle of Love); bridge; couple in a boat; trees.
Koechlin 1924; Lalou 1989: France, late 14th century.
Gaborit-Chopin 2003 and Museum's opinion 2010: Meuse, late 14th or early 15th century.
Attribution
Unknown
Reverse
Pencil inscription (19th C.) inside the first leaf: 'Des veillards [sic] se rendent à la fontaine de Jouvence, dardez par des satyres / fin du XIVe siècle'.
On the inside of the other covering leaf: 'L'homme rajeuni aborde en l'île de Cythère. Il est conduit en castellet d'amour par deux jeunes dames. / La guête couchée au faîte du donjon interroge la 1re dame'.
Labelled: 'No. 108', 'N 1051', 'A 57', 'no. 887'.
Object Condition
Open cracks along the edges of the internal leaves.
Later metal pivot.
Comments
Five tablets attached together by a metallic pin. Gori (1759) depicts a leather case for the tablets, though it seems this was lost before their acquisition by Révoil (see Gaborit-Chopin 2003). Only the two outer tablets, forming the 'binding' of the ensemble are sculpted on their outer side. The other four tablets are recessed on both sides to receive the wax.
Provenance
Treasury of Saint-Lambert in Liège (see Gori, 1759). Collection of Pierre Révoil, Lyon, who had acquired it in August 1828 (see letter from Révoil to Turpin de Crissé, information communicated by Béatrice de Chancel); acquired in 1828, exhibited at the Musée national du Moyen Âge-Musée Cluny, Paris, from 1948 (inventory Cl. 20679); at the Musée du Louvre since 1986.
Bibliography
F. Gori, Thesaurus Veterum Diptychorum Consularium et Ecclesiasticorum, 3 vols, (Florence, 1759), I, pl. opposite p. 85, and pl. opposite p. 79 (reproduced in Gaborit-Chopin 2003, figs 222a-b).
M. de Laborde, Notice des émaux, bijoux et objets divers exposés dans les galeries du musée du Louvre (Paris, 1857), no. 887.
A. Sauzay, Musée de la Renaissance [Musée du Louvre]. Notice des ivoires (Paris, 1863), no. 57.
E. Molinier, Musée National du Louvre. Catalogue des ivoires (Paris, 1896), no. 108.
R. Koechlin, 'Quelques ivoires gothiques français connus antérieurement au XIXe siècle', in Revue de l'Art Chrétien 41 (1911), pp. 281-292, fig. 2.
L. Serbat, 'Tablettes à écrire du XIVe siècle', in Bulletin de la Société nationale des antiquaires de France, 1913, p. 308.
R. Koechlin, Les Ivoires gothiques français (Paris, 1924), I, pp. 433, 442, 443; II, nos. 1163-1164; III, pl. CXCVI.
E. Lalou, 'Les tablettes de cire médiévales', in Bibliothèque de l'École des Chartes 147 (1989), pp. 123-140 [no. 15, p. 139].
E. Lalou, 'Les tablettes à écrire de l'Antiquité à l'époque moderne', in Actes du colloque de Paris, oct. 1990 (Turnhout, 1992), in Bibliologia, 12, p. 270.
D. Gaborit-Chopin, 'Les tablettes à écrire d'ivoire au Moyen Âge', in Métiers d'art, no. 54-55, December 1994-March 1995, fig.
B. Bousmanne, 'A propos d'un carnet à écrire en ivoire du 14e siècle conservé à la Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique', in Als Ich can. Liber Amicorum in Memory of Prof. Dr. Maurits Smeyers (Paris-Leuven-Dudley, MA, 2002), pp. 189-190, fig. 13.
D. Gaborit-Chopin, Ivoires médiévaux, Ve-XVe siècle (Paris: Musée du Louvre, 2003), no. 222.
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. 589-90, in relation to no. 176.
P. Williamson and G. Davies, Medieval Ivory Carvings 1200-1550 (London, 2014), p. 351, in relation to no. 120.
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