Gothic Ivories Project | Gabled polyptych (tabernacle) (Front)

Wings, left
Register 1: Annunciation; vase of lilies.
Register 2: Adoring Magi (part of Adoration of the Magi continued on centre panel).
Centre panel
Standing Virgin and Child; Virgin holding a flower in her right hand.
Wings, right
Register 1: Nativity; Joseph holding Christ Child.
Register 2: Presentation in the Temple; Simeon praying before Christ.
Pinnacles.

London 1923: French, 14th century.
Koechlin 1924: French, 1st third of the 14th century.
Museum's opinion 2009: French, early 14th century.

Attribution
Unknown

Hinges
Two sets of two ring hinges on either side.

Polychromy - Gilding
Faint traces of polychromy: green.

Reverse
Flat and smooth. Ink inscription at the top of the centre panel: 'Cette image est du XIIe siècle ou XIIIe'; white and blue label with the inscription: 'Lady Wernher's Collection no. 15' [cancelled]; white and blue label with the inscription: 'collection Wernher no. 696'.

Object Condition
Missing: pinnacles on either side of the central gable (bases remain with holes to secure the pinnacles); right hand of Christ.
Hole in the underside of the centre panel.
Cracked. The left hand side colonnette has been repaired.

Provenance
Collection of Eugen Felix, Cologne: sale, Cologne, 25 October 1886, lot 313 (with ill.). Collection of Lady Ludlow (in 1923). Collection of Sir Julius Wernher (d. 1912), Bath House, London; Wernher sale, Christie's, London, 5 July 2000, lot W60; remained in the Wernher collection; on loan to English Heritage and displayed at Ranger's House since 2002.

Bibliography
Catalogue of an Exhibition of Carvings in Ivory, exhibition catalogue, London, Burlington Fine Arts Club, 1923, no. 99.
R. Koechlin, Les Ivoires gothiques français (Paris, 1924), I, pp. 126, 128; II, no. 135.

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