Gothic Ivories Project | Casket, with arches (coffret; frise d'arcatures) (Front)

Lid
Meeting of lovers (courting couples); youth holding a pair of gloves; man kneeling before a lady; lady holding a dog; youth chucking his lover under the chin.
Rosettes in the spandrels.
Body, front
Father dividing his inheritance; mother standing beside a chest of coins; the prodigal son (or his brother) kneeling to receive a bag of coins; the prodigal son (or his brother) on horseback with a hawk on his wrist; trees.
End, right
The prodigal son on horseback; servant on foot with a spear.
Body, back
Servant (?) with a jug and cup; prodigal son holding a jug of wine between prostitutes; prodigal son in bed with a prostitute (?).
End, left
Bare-chested prodigal son playing chess with a prostitute; prodigal son chased away by the prostitutes when all his money is squandered.

Campbell 1995: France, ca. 1325-1350 century.
Museum's opinion 2012: France, 14th century.

Attribution
Unknown

Provenance
Collection of George and Florence Blumenthal, Paris and New York (by 1926): given by them to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1941.

Bibliography
S. Rubinstein-Bloch, Catalogue of the collection of George and Florence Blumenthal (Paris, 1926), III, pl. VI-VII.
Arts of the Middle Ages 1000-1400, exhibition catalogue, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, 1940, no. 138.
P. Verdier, 'The Tapestry of the Prodigal Son', in Journal of the Walter's Art Gallery XVIII (1955), pp. 9 ff.
Medieval Images, exhibition catalogue, Katonah, The Katonah Gallery, 1978, no. 16.
Songs of Glory, exhibition catalogue, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma Museum of Art, 1985, no. 79.
Medieval Art from Late Antique through Late Gothic from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago, exhibition catalogue, Moscow, State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts and Leningrad, The Hermitage, 1990, no. 45.
C. Jean Campbell, 'Courting, Harlotry and the Art of Gothic Ivory Carving', in Gesta, XXXIV/1 (1995), p. 12.

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