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Mirror case (valve de miroir) (Front)

Mirror case (valve de miroir) (Front)
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Front

Back

Front

Front

Subject
Secular. Courtly love.

Repository Institution
www.musee-moyenage.fr

To purchase an image
www.photo.rmn.fr


Paris, Musée de Cluny-Musée national du Moyen Âge

Cl. 383

Ivory

Height: 78mm
Width: 75mm

Courting couple (meeting of lovers); embracing couple; old man (hermit?); trees.
No corner terminals.


Koechlin Number: 1060

Westwood 1876 and Du Sommerard 1883: 14th century.
Koechlin 1924: France, 1st half of the 14th century.
Huchard 1998: French, 1st half of the 14th century. Tristan and Iseult.
Rennes 2008: French, 14th century.
Paris, BnF, 2009: French, c. 1320-1330, uncertain iconography.
Paris, Cluny, 2009 and Museum's opinion 2010: French, 1st half of the 14th century


Attribution
Unknown

Comments
This scene possibly depicts Tristan and Iseult with Ogrin (see Huchard 1998), but this interpretation is not widely accepted.

Provenance
Collection of Alexandre Du Sommerard: acquired for the museum in 1843.

Bibliography
E. Viollet-Le-Duc, Dictionnaire raisonné du mobilier français de l'époque Carolingienne à la Renaissance (1871), IV, p. 135.
J. O. Westwood, Fictile Ivories in the South Kensington Museum (London, 1876), no. 852 ('58.212).
E. Du Sommerard, Catalogue et description des antiquités et objets d'art exposés au musée de Cluny (Paris, 1883), no. 1072.
R. Koechlin, Les Ivoires gothiques français (Paris, 1924), I, p. 391, 393; II, no. 1060; III, pl. CLXXXII.
V. Huchard, 'Ivoires profanes', as part of the Un Mois, une oeuvre series (March 1998) [available on demand from museum].
M. Camille, The Medieval Art of Love: Objects and Subjects of Desire (London, 1998), p. 130 (with ill.).
Le Roi Arthur. Une Légende en devenir, exhibition catalogue, Rennes, Les Champs Libres, 2008, p. 56 (fig. 138).
La Légende du roi Arthur, dir. by T. Delcourt, exhibition catalogue, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, 2009, no. 77.
Le Bain et le miroir. Soins du corps et cosmétiques de l'Antiquité à la Renaissance, ed. by I. Bardiès- Fronty, M. Bimbenet-Privat, P. Walter, exhibition catalogue, Paris, Musée de Cluny (Musée national du Moyen Âge), and Musée national de la Renaissance (Château d'Ecouen), 20 May - 21 September 2009, no. tbc


Image

Conway Library © Courtauld Institute of Art.

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