Gothic Ivories Project | Box (boite) (Body, front)

Lid
Male dancers; moresca; female dancer; male musician with drum and whistle; dancing jester holding a bauble.
Body, front
Hunter with a spear; archer with a bow; trees.
End, right
Hunter on foot with a spear, blowing a horn; dogs pursuing a stag; sun; trees.
Body, back
Jousting knights in armour; shield; horses.
End, left
Gathering of pears (?); man holding a club to beat the tree and make the fruits fall; female figure collecting the fruits in her skirt; female musician playing the harp; servant with a stick.
Chequered pattern on the bottom.
Foliated border; crosshatched background.

Attribution
Unknown

Polychromy - Gilding
Traces of polychromy: green (trees, ground, foliated decoration, leaves).

Reverse
Engraved on all sides. Underside inlaid with checkerboard of bone and dark wood.

Object Condition
Missing: part of the lower border on the right side, metal clasp. Bone strip on the lower edge of the right side is a later replacement.

Provenance
Acquired by the Museum in 1860.

Bibliography
Inventory of Art Objects Acquired in the Year 1860, in, Inventory of the Objects in the Art Division of the Museum at South Kensington, arranged according to the dates of their acquisition (London, 1868), I, p. 24.
W. Maskell, Ivories Ancient and Mediaeval in the South Kensington Museum (London, 1872), p. 25.
J. von Schlosser, ‘Die Werkstatt der Embriachi in Venedig’, in Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses 20 (1899), p. 227, cat. no. 60.
M. Longhurst, Catalogue of Carvings in Ivory, Victoria and Albert Museum, 2 vols (London, 1927 and 1929), II (1929), p. 54-55, pl. L, LI.
P. Nuttall, 'Dancing, love and the ’beautiful game’. A new interpretation of a group of fifteenth-century ’gaming’ boxes’, in Renaissance Studies 24 (2010), passim, figs 2, 7, 12.
P. Williamson and G. Davies, Medieval Ivory Carvings 1200-1550 (London, 2014), no. 234, seel also no. 233.

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