Gothic Ivories Project | Statuette (Front)

Seated Virgin and Child; Christ standing on the Virgin's left knee; bare-chested Christ; Christ holding a bird in his left hand; loincloth.

Griggs 1904-1907: English (?), 14th century.
Prior and Gardner 1912: English.
Koechlin 1924: France, end of 14th century.
Longhurst 1929: France, end of 14th century.
Leeuwenberg 1969: France, late 18th or early 19th century.
Williamson and Davies 2014: Probably French (Normandy), c. 1340-50.

Attribution
Master of the Agrafe Forgeries (Leeuwenberg 1969)

Reverse
Carved in the round.

Object Condition
The ivory is slightly desiccated at the front (from exposure to sun?).
Missing: crown, right hand of Christ, right hand of the Virgin.
Hole in the Virgin's head for attachment of a metal crown. Deep hole in the back of Christ's head.
Christ has been broken away from the Virgin and refixed. The bird's head has been restored.
Semi-circular section cut away at the lower left of the back of the throne.

Comments
On the underside of the seat is a cylindrical cavity 2.7cm in depth (probably for a relic, as it was sealed with a rectangular base plate); the bottom of the base is pierced with two square-sectioned dowel holes.

Provenance
In the possession of John Webb (b. 1799, d. 1880), London, by 1862: purchased from him by the Museum in 1867.

Bibliography
Catalogue of the Special Exhibition of Works of Art of the Mediaeval, Renaissance, and more recent periods on loan at the South Kensington Museum, June 1862..., revised edition, exhibition catalogue (London, 1863), no. 103.
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. 12.
W. Maskell, Ivories Ancient and Mediaeval in the South Kensington Museum (London, 1872), pp. 76-77, no. 201-67.
W. Griggs, Portfolio of Ivories [London, 1904-1907], pt. XXII.
E. S. Prior, A. Gardner, Mediaeval Figure-Sculpture in England (Cambridge, 1912), fig. 416, p. 364.
R. Koechlin, Les Ivoires gothiques français (Paris, 1924), I, pp. 249, 251; II, no. 703; III, pl. CXV.
M. Longhurst, Catalogue of Carvings in Ivory, Victoria and Albert Museum, 2 vols (London, 1927 and 1929), II (1929), p. 31, pl. XXIX.
Europäische Kunst um 1400. Achte Ausstellung unter den Auspizien des Europarates, ed. by Vinzenz Oberhammer et. al., exhibition catalogue, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, 1962, no. 359 (H. Fillitz).
J. Leeuwenberg, 'Early Nineteenth-Century Gothic Ivories', in Aachener Kunstblätter 39 (1969), p. 121.
D. Gaborit-Chopin, Ivoires du Moyen Age (Freiburg, 1978), p. 159.
N. Stratford, 'Glastonbury and two gothic ivories in the United States', in British Archaeology Association (1983), pp. 208-216 (pp. 213, 215 n. 11, pl. LXXVIIa).
R. H. Randall, Masterpieces of Ivory from the Walters Art Gallery (New York, 1985), p. 206.
W. D. Wixom, 'A Late Thirteenth-Century English Ivory Virgin', in Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 50, no. 3 (1987), p. 339.
D. Gaborit-Chopin, Ivoires médiévaux, Ve-XVe siècle (Paris: Musée du Louvre, 2003), pp. 440, 581.
P. Williamson and G. Davies, Medieval Ivory Carvings 1200-1550 (London, 2014), no. 13.
M. Tomasi, 'Note su due avori gotici del Museo Civico d'Arte Antica', in Palazzo Madama. Studi e notizie, forthcoming.

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