Attribution
Unknown

Polychromy - Gilding
Extensive traces of polychromy and gilding: gold (along the hem of clothing, foliated decoration, hair, features of the dragon); red (nose, ears and features of the dragon), brown/pink (face, neck and hands of Margaret), black (eyes). Foliated decoration hiding the cracks.

Reverse
Carved in the round. The underside of the base is crosshatched and has remains of glue.

Object Condition
Missing: tips of the saint's fingers (replaced).
Foliated decoration hiding the cracks.

Comments
The saint may originally have been holding the stem of a cross. The statuette was previously mounted. Barnet (1997) suggests that this may once have formed part of a tabernacle.

Provenance
Collection of Karl Reeve (in 1858); bought from him by the British Museum in 1858.

Bibliography
Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of London, 1st series, IV (1859), pp. 188-189.
O. M. Dalton, Catalogue of the Ivory Carvings of the Christian Era in the British Museum, (London, 1909), no. 340.
R. Koechlin, Les Ivoires gothiques français (Paris, 1924), I, p. 258; II, no. 709; III, pl. CXVI.
Les Fastes du Gothique: le siècle de Charles V, ed. by F. Baron, exhibition catalogue, Paris, Grand Palais, 1981, no. 142.
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, no. 27, pp. 163-164.
J. Robinson, Masterpieces of Medieval Art (London, 2008), p. 134.
J. Lowden, Medieval and Later Ivories in the Courtauld Gallery (London, 2013), p. 55, in relation to no. 5.