Palace of the God of Love.
Register 1: courting couples (meeting of lovers); youth chucking his lover under the chin. Couple kneeling before the God of Love; God of Love aiming an arrow at a kneeling youth; God of Love with a hawk on his wrist. Couple holding hands.
Register 2: courting couples; lady holding small dog; couple making a wreath; youth and lady plucking flowers from a tree; couple holding hands.
Medallions enclosing quatrefoils with rosettes in the spandrels. Pointed trefoils.
Corner terminals: four crouching monsters.
Griggs 1904-1907: France, 14th century.
Koechlin 1924: France, 1st half of the 14th century.
Longhurst 1929: France, 1st half of the 14th century.
Natanson 1951: France, c. 1330-1350.
Williamson and Davies 2014: French (Paris), c.1310-20.
Attribution
Unknown
Polychromy - Gilding
Remains of polychromy on the back: dark blue in the central section and red around the edges.
Reverse
Back turned with a depression for (missing) mirror.
Remains of paint: dark blue in the central section and red around the edges.
Object Condition
The ground is so thin that the ivory has bneen pierced in a number of places. Worn.
The lower left corner terminal monster is chipped.
Comments
This mirror case may form a pair with Inv. 107376 in the Thomson collection in Toronto (see Williamson and Davies 2014).
Provenance
Collection of Prince Petr Soltykoff (b. c. 1801, d. 1889): sale, Paris, Drouot, 8-10, 15-17, 22-24, 29 April and 1 May 1861, lot 354; purchased by John Webb (b. 1799, d. 1880), London: purchased from him by the Museum in 1865.
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. 134.
Inventory of Art Objects acquired in the Year 1865. 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. 32.
W. Maskell, Ivories Ancient and Mediaeval in the South Kensington Museum (London, 1872), p. 41.
The South Kensington Museum: Etchings of Works of Art in the Museum (London, 1882), pl. 96.
W. Griggs, Portfolio of Ivories [London, 1904-1907], pt. XXVIII.
A. Michel, L'histoire de l'art depuis les premiers temps chrétiens jusqu'à nos jours, 8 vols, 17 parts (Paris, 1905-1929), II, pt. I, p. 494.
R. Koechlin, 'Le Dieu d'Amour et le château d'Amour sur les valves de boîtes à miroirs', in Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 5th series, IV (1921), pp. 279-297 (p. 284).
R. Koechlin, Les Ivoires gothiques français (Paris, 1924), I, pp. 401-402; II, no. 1081.
M. Longhurst, Catalogue of Carvings in Ivory, Victoria and Albert Museum, 2 vols (London, 1927 and 1929), II (1929), p. 47, pl. XLIV.
J. Natanson, Gothic Ivories of the 13th and 14th Centuries (London, 1951), p. 37, fig. 47.
Les Fastes du Gothique: le siècle de Charles V, ed. by F. Baron, exhibition catalogue, Paris, Grand Palais, 1981, p. 172.
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. 229.
L'art au temps des rois maudits: Philippe le Bel et ses fils (1285-1328), exhibition catalogue, Paris, Grand Palais, 1998, p. 164.
D. Gaborit-Chopin, Miroirs. Jeux et reflets depuis l'Antiquité, catalogue d'exposition, Rouen, Musée départemental des Antiquités, 2000-2001, p. 150.
D. Gaborit-Chopin, Ivoires médiévaux, Ve-XVe siècle (Paris: Musée du Louvre, 2003), p. 358, fig. 130a.
B. Roy, ‘Archéologie de l’amour courtois; note sur les miroirs d’ivoire’, in Miroirs et jeux de miroirs dans la littérature médiévale, ed. by F. Pomel (Rennes, 2003), pp. 233-251 (p. 204, fig. 18).
P. Williamson and G. Davies, Medieval Ivory Carvings 1200-1550 (London, 2014), no. 202.
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