Gothic Ivories Project | Booklet of 3 writing tablets (including 2 painted panels) with 2 double-sided carved covers (5 leaves; tablettes à écrire; colonnettes)

Height: 72mm
Width: 81mm (open); 40mm (closed)
Depth: 12mm (open); 22mm (closed)

Leaf 1 recto
Register 1: Carrying of the Cross; man holding a hammer.
Register 2: Judas receiving the reward; purse. Betrayal (Taking of Christ; Kiss of Judas).
Edge
tbc
Leaf 1 verso
Standing Virgin and Child; male and female kneeling figures in donor position.
Leaf 2 recto (painted)
Adoring Magi (forming an Adoration of the Magi when combined with the facing scene)
Leaf 4 verso (painted)
Angels with the soul of the Virgin; musician angel playing the rebec.
Leaf 5 recto
Coronation of the Virgin; angel crowning the Virgin.
Edge tbc
Leaf 5 verso
Register 1: Crucifixion with thieves; Virgin and saint John the Evangelist; sun and moon.
Register 2: Pilate washing his hands; Flagellation.

Museum's opinion 2011: North French, c. 1300 (carving). Upper Rhenish, c. 1310-1320 (painting).

Attribution
Unknown

Polychromy - Gilding
Gilding and polychromy: red, green and gold. Painted tablets. Painted quatrefoils in the spandrels on leaf 1 verso and leaf 5 recto.

Reverse
The three inside tablets are recessed to receive the wax on both sides, including the two which were painted slightly later.

Comments
The covers are carved on both sides and on the edge.

Provenance
Albert Freund, Vienna. Blumka Gallery, New York. Collection of Jack and Belle Linsky, New York: donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1982.

Bibliography
Metropolitan Museum of Art. Notable Acquisitions 1982-1983, p. 14.
The Jack and Belle Linsky Collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, exhibition catalogue, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1984, no. 50.
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, pp. 90-92.
Mirror of the Medieval World, exhibition catalogue, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1999, no. 152, pp. 130-131.
J. Lowden, Medieval and Later Ivories in the Courtauld Gallery (London, 2013), p. 84, in relation to no. 12.
P. Williamson and G. Davies, Medieval Ivory Carvings 1200-1550 (London, 2014), in relation to no. 121.

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