Martyrdom of saint Thomas Becket; four knights in armour; knight striking saint Thomas on the head; shield with eagle; situla; bishop's mitre; monstrance on the altar; tonsured chaplain striking one of the knights with a cross; soul of saint Thomas Becket borne to heaven by angels; God the Father; Canterbury cathedral; architecture.
Pinnacles; tracery; pierced quatrefoils.
Schnitzler, Volbach, Bloch 1964: England, c. 1400.
Leeuwenberg 1969: France, late 18th or early 19th century.
Museum's opinion 2012: Northern France (Picardie?) or England, c. 1400.
Attribution
Unknown
Reverse
Flat and smooth, with traces of glue. Raised border.
Object Condition
Broken: cross held by priest and part of the architecture.
Provenance
Collection of Ernst and Martha Kofler-Truniger, Lucerne (by 1964): acquired by the Museum in 1970.
Bibliography
H. Schnitzler, F. Volbach, P. Bloch, Skulpturen, Elfenbein, Perlmutter, Stein, Holz Europäisches Mittelalter, Sammlung E. und M. Kofler-Truniger, 2 vols (Lucerne, 1964), no. S.117.
J. Leeuwenberg, 'Early Nineteenth-Century Gothic Ivories', in Aachener Kunstblätter 39 (1969), pp. 111-148 (p. 142).
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. 594-5, fig. 223, in relation to no. 179.
C. T. Little , ‘The Art of Gothic Ivories: Studies at the Crossroads,’ in The Sculpture Journal 23.1 (2014), pp. 13-29, fig. 13.
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