Attribution
Unknown

Reverse
The handle which was originally set into a chamfered slot in the back has been lost. The slot is unusually short.
A horse's bit (briole) carved in low relief: 'freno d'argento o morso a tre chiamate' (see Provenance).

Provenance
Both the inscription on the tomb and the device (horse's bit) on the back belong to the Borromeo family. The device is said to have been granted by Giovanni Galeazzo Sforza to Giovanni Borromeo (d. 1495) for his part in the battle of Crevola in 1487. However, the pax cannot stylistically be dates to after 1487: the device and probably also the inscription on the front must therefore have been added in the late 15th century. The pax may still have belonged to or been commissioned for a religious institution by a member of the Borromeo family from the beginning. In the possession of John Webb (b. 1799, d. 1880), London: 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. 119.
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. 8.
W. Maskell, Ivories Ancient and Mediaeval in the South Kensington Museum (London, 1872), p. 96.
J. O. Westwood, Fictile Ivories in the South Kensington Museum (1876), no. 774 ('73.274).
N. Layard, 'Notes on Some English Paxes including an example urgently found in Ipswich', in Archaeological Journal 62 (June 1904), pp.119-130 (p. 129).
M. Longhurst, Catalogue of Carvings in Ivory, Victoria and Albert Museum, 2 vols (London, 1927 and 1929), II (1929), p. 61, pl. LIII.
T. Richter, Paxtafeln und Pacificalia, Studien zu Form, Ikonographie und liturgischem Gebrauch (Weimar, 2003), p. 214.
P. Williamson and G. Davies, Medieval Ivory Carvings 1200-1550 (London, 2014), no. 143.