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Box (boite) (Bottom)

Box (boite) (Bottom)
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Lid

End, right

Body, back


Lid

Bottom

End, left

End, right

Body, front

Body, back

Lid

End, left

End, left

Body, back

Body, front

End, right

Lid

Bottom

Subject
Secular. Courtly love.

Repository Institution
www.vam.ac.uk

To purchase an image
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London, Victoria and Albert Museum

4660-1859

Bone;wood (core and squares alternating with bone squares on the bottom);metal (fittings and lock)

Height: 69 mm
Width: 147mm
Depth: 182 mm

Lid
Male dancers; female dancer; musician with drum and whistle; dancing jester; Moresca.
Body, front
Garden of Love; courting couple (meeting of lovers); offering of a flower; trees.
End, right
Two courting couples (meeting of lovers); two couples holding hands; male musician playing the flute; trees; basse dance.
Body, back
Jester holding a purse; lady; birds; trees.
End, left
Jousting knights in armour; shields; horses; trees.
Chequered pattern on the bottom.
Foliated border with roses. Crosshatched background.


Koechlin Number: 1319

Westwood 1876: England (?), late 15th century.
Koechlin 1924: France, end of the 15th century.
Longhurst 1929: France, end of the 15th century.
Williamson and Davies 2014: South Netherlandish, c. 1440-70.


Attribution
Unknown

Polychromy - Gilding
Extensive traces of gilding and polychromy: green, brown, and red (interior once painted red).

Reverse
Carved on all sides. Underside inlaid with a checkerboard of bone and dark wood.

Object Condition
Missing: portions of the lower border and of the bottom (replaced with wood).

Comments
Koechlin and Longhurst believe the box to be French but made under Italian influences in the court circle of Charles VI.
V&A inventory number 6747-1860 is an almost exact copy.

Provenance
Acquired by the museum in Brussels in 1859.

Bibliography
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. 31.
W. Maskell, Ivories Ancient and Mediaeval in the South Kensington Museum (London, 1872), p. 20.
J. O. Westwood, Fictile Ivories in the South Kensington Museum (London, 1876), no. 716 ('73.260b)
J. von Schlosser, ‘Die Werkstatt der Embriachi in Venedig’, in Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses 20 (1899), p. 227, cat. no. 59.
List of Works of Art acquired by the Victoria and Albert Museum during the Year 1867. Arranged according to the Dates of Acquisition (London, 1906), p. 31.
R. Koechlin, Les Ivoires gothiques français (Paris, 1924), I, p. 527; II, no. 1319; III, pl. CCXXX.
M. Longhurst, Catalogue of Carvings in Ivory, Victoria and Albert Museum, 2 vols (London, 1927 and 1929), II (1929), p. 54.
P. Nuttall, 'Dancing, love and the ’beautiful game’. A new interpretation of a group of fifteenth-century ’gaming’ boxes’, in Renaissance Studies 24 (2010), pp. 10-11, figs. 1, 3-4, 10-11.
P. Williamson and G. Davies, Medieval Ivory Carvings 1200-1550 (London, 2014), no. 233.


Image

© Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

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