Meal at Bethany (at the house of Simon the Leper); saint Mary Magdalene anointing Christ's feet; merged with Last Supper with saint John the Evangelist leaning on Christ's breast; apostles.
Musician angels in the spandrels (trumpet; drums). Twisted columns. Tracery. Pierced quatrefoils.
Leeuwenberg 1969: France (?), last quarter of the 18th century to 1st half of the 19th century.
Museum's opinion 2012: England, c. 1400-1425.
Williamson and Davies 2014: Northern French or Northern Italian (Milan?), late 14th-early 15th century or early 19th century.
Attribution
Master of the Agrafe Forgeries (Leeuwenberg 1969)
Reverse
Flat and smooth.
Label with pencil inscription: '207'. White label with inscription: '28593'.
Object Condition
Restoration to the left border.
Comments
These panels belong to the same ensemble as some openwork panels now at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, an openwork panel of the Nativity formerly in the Trivulzio collection in Milan (see Koechlin 1924), and an openwork panel in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (366-1871). See related objects.
Provenance
Collection of Michael Friedsam (b. 1858, d. 1931): his bequest to the Museum in 1931.
Bibliography
J. Leeuwenberg, 'Early Nineteenth-Century Gothic Ivories', in Aachener Kunstblätter, 39 (1969), pp. 111-148 (pp. 125-126, fig. 26).
P. Williamson and G. Davies, Medieval Ivory Carvings 1200-1550 (London, 2014), in relation to no. 171.
C. T. Little , ‘The Art of Gothic Ivories: Studies at the Crossroads,’ in The Sculpture Journal 23.1 (2014), pp. 13-29, fig. 10.
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