Soldiers and clerics (possibly including a bishop; possibly martyrdom of saint Thomas Becket); four soldiers in armour; axe; two clerics; two tonsured figures; books; staff or crozier.
Porter 1974: English, c. 1200-1210.
Museum's opinion 2011: French or English, late 12th-early 13th century.
Attribution
Unknown
Reverse
Carved in the round.
Object Condition
Missing: head of the central figure and of the two clerics.
Comments
It has been suggested that the hole between the tonsured figures may have held a cross.
Provenance
Collection of John Hunt (b. 1900, d. 1976) and Gertrude Hunt (b. 1903, d. 1975), Limerick; now part of the Hunt Museum which opened in 1997.
Bibliography
K. Hoffman and F. Deuchler, The Year 1200, A Centennial Exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, exhibition catalogue, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1970, II, no. 153.
D. A. Porter, Ivory Carvings in Later Medieval England 1200-1400 (unpublished PhD thesis, State University of New York at Binghamton, 1974), no. 5, pp. 31-34.
The Hunt Museum Essential Guide (London, 2002), p. 87.
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