Courting couple (Meeting of lovers); youth holding a ring and lady holding a pomegranate, on either side of a fountain behind which stands a jester; collared and chained monkey eating a pomegranate from a basket; dog. Man brandishing a sword as the lady turns away; jester holding a bauble; wild unchained animal behind the man; dog.
Woven fence and gate; trees; lattice background.
Molinier 1890: France, beginning of the 16th century.
Koechlin 1924: France, early 16th century.
Young 1956: France (North) or Flanders, early 16th century.
New York 1970: France (North) or Flanders, early 16th century.
Ann Arbor 1975: Northern French or Flemish, early 16th century.
Theuerkauff 1986: France (?), 16th or 19th century (?).
Museum's opinion 2012: France (North) or Netherlands (South), early 16th century.
Attribution
Unknown
Reverse
Carved in the round.
Object Condition
Cracked through central pillar.
Missing: head to the left of the fountain (replaced).
Provenance
Collection of Frédéric Spitzer, Paris: his sale, Paris, 1893, lot 169. Collection of Maurice Kann, Paris (in 1911): his sale, Galerie George Petit, Paris, 1910, lot 227. Collection of Édouard Larcade, Paris. L. P. Bresset et fils, Paris: purchased for The Cloisters Collection in 1955.
Bibliography
La Collection Spitzer (Paris, 1890), I, no. 134 (E. Molinier).
La Collection Maurice Kann (Paris, 1911), p. 37.
R. Koechlin, Les Ivoires gothiques français (Paris, 1924), I, p. 457; II, no. 1246.
B. Young, 'Scenes in an ivory garden', in Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, vol. XIV (1956), pp. 252-256.
V. K. Ostoia, The Middle Ages: Treasures from The Cloisters and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, exhibition catalogue, Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Chicago, The Art Institute, 1970, no. 108, pp. 216, 228-229.
Images of Love and Death in Renaissance and Late Medieval Art, exhibition catalogue, ed. by W. R. Levin, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan, November 1975-January 1976, no. 76, pl. XIX.
C. Theuerkauff, Die Bildwerke der Skulpturengalerie Berlin (Berlin, 1986), II: Die Bildwerke in Elfenbein des 16.-19. Jahrhunderts, fig. 116d (in relation to no. 116).
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