Side 1: courting couple (meeting of lovers); lady and youth in bust (Youth).
Side 2: skeleton in bust (Death); vermin; worms; toad; lizard (salamander?); shroud.
Foliated decoration.
Koechlin 1924 and New York 1975: Northern France or Flanders, early 16th century.
Museum's opinion 2012: France (North) or Netherlands (South), c. 1500-1525.
Attribution
Unknown
Reverse
Carved in the round.
Provenance
Collection of Karl Thewalt, Cologne: his sale, Kunsthaus Lempertz, Cologne, 4-14 November 1903, lot 599 (with ill.). Collection of J. Pierpont Morgan (d. 1913), London and New York; estate of J. Pierpont Morgan (1913-1917); gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1917.
Bibliography
R. Koechlin, Les Ivoires gothiques français (Paris, 1924), I, p. 449; II, no. 1240.
Europe in Torment: 1450-1550, exhibition catalogue, Providence, Rhode Island School of Design Museum, 6 March-7 April 1974, p. 108-109, no. 41-42.
The Secular Spirit: Life and Art at the End of the Middle Ages, exhibition catalogue, New York, The Cloisters, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1975, no. 254.
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, p. 278, ill.
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