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Casket (coffret) (Body, front)

Casket (coffret) (Body, front)
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Body, front

End, right

Lid

End, left

Body, back


End, left

Lid

End, right

Bottom

Lid

Lid

Body, front

Body, back

End, right

End, left

Body, front

Interior

Body, back

Subject
Secular. Courtly love. Romance.

Repository Institution
www.vam.ac.uk

To purchase an image
www.vandaimages.com


London, Victoria and Albert Museum

146-1866

Red velvet (modern lining);brass (19th-century fittings);ivory

Height: 103 mm
Width: 246 mm
Depth: 126 mm
Weight: 1600g

Lid
Attack on the Castle of Love; knights in armour assaulting the castle; ladies throwing flowers from the battlements; knight using a sling to throw a flower; crossbow tipped with a rose; knight climbing a rope ladder; shield with flowers; portcullis. Tournament; winged God of Love throwing arrows; jousting knights on horseback; courting couples (meeting of lovers); ladies and youths embracing and observing the tournament from a balcony with lozenge pattern; two heralds in trees blowing trumpets; shield with three flowers. Attack on the Castle of Love; ladies throwing flowers from the battlements; catapult to throw baskets of roses.
Body, front
Aristotle teaching Alexander; Aristotle ridden by Phyllis, observed by Alexander. Fountain of Youth; fountain decorated with lion heads or monster heads; old and young; cripples with crutches; couples bathing; youth chucking his lover under the chin; trees.
End, right
Knight and an old man holding a key (probably Galahad receiving the keys to the Castle of the Maidens); attendant holding his helm; horse; castle.
Body, back
Gawain in armour fighting the lion. Lancelot crossing the sword bridge, with swords and spears falling from the sky. Gawain on the perilous bed; bed on wheels and with bells; swords and spears falling from the sky; shield with a lion's paw. The three maidens at the Château Merveil; trees.
End, left
Capture of the unicorn; man spearing the unicorn; maiden holding a mirror. Tristan and Iseult conversing; king Mark in the tree; fountain reflecting king Mark's face.


Koechlin Number: 1282

Westwood 1876 and Griggs 1904-1907: France, 14th century.
Koechlin 1924: France, 1st half of the 14th century.
Longhurst 1929: France, 1st half of the 14th century.
Delcourt 2009: France (Paris), 14th century.
Williamson and Davies 2014: France (Paris), c. 1320-30.


Attribution
Unknown

Reverse
Carved on all sides.
Trace on an illegible inscription on the bottom.

Object Condition
Four modern ivory feet have been added at the corners.

Provenance
Collection of Prince Petr Soltykoff (b. c. 1801, d. 1889): sold, Paris, Drouot, 8-10, 15-17, 22-24, 29 April and 1 May 1861, lot 341; bought by Croyet; in the possession of John Webb (b. 1799, d. 1880), London (by 1862): purchased from him by the Museum in 1866.

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. 128.
HMSO, Inventory of the Objects in the Art Division of the Museum at South Kensington, arranged according to the Dates of their Acquisition (London, 1868), p. 16.
W. Maskell, Ivories Ancient and Mediaeval in the South Kensington Museum (London, 1872), p. 64.
J. O. Westwood, Fictile Ivories in the South Kensington Museum (London, 1876), no. 688 (73.259).
W. Griggs, Portfolio of Ivories [London, 1904-1907], pt. XXV.
O. Dalton, 'Two Medieval Caskets with Subjects from Romance', in Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, Vol. 5, No. 15 (June 1904), pp. 299-301, 303, 305-307, 309.
A. Maskell, Ivories (Connoisseurs Library), (London, 1905), pl. XLVI.
R. S. Loomis, 'The Allegorical Siege in the Art of the Middle Ages', in American Journal of Archeology, 2nd series, vol. 23, no. 3 (1919), pp. 255-269, fig. 1.
R. S. Loomis, 'Vestiges of Tristram in London', in Burlington Magazine XLI (1922), pp. 54-64 (p. 58, with ill.).
R. Koechlin, Les Ivoires gothiques français (Paris, 1924), I, pp. 485, 489, 491, 497-9, 501, 504; II, no. 1282.
M. Longhurst, Catalogue of Carvings in Ivory, Victoria and Albert Museum, 2 vols (London, 1927 and 1929), II (1929), p. 53, pl. XLVI, XLVII.
A. McLaren Young, 'A French Medieval Ivory Casket at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts', in The Connoisseur, CXX (1947), pp. 16-21 (fig. VI-VII).
D. J. A. Ross, 'Allegory and Romance on a Mediaeval French Marriage Casket', in Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 11 (1948), pp. 112-142, pl. 27, and pp. 113, 132, 135-6, 140.
J. Natanson, Gothic Ivories of the 13th and 14th Centuries (London, 1951), p. 37, fig. 42.
A. Rapp, Der Jungbrünnen in Literatur und bildender Kunst des Mittelalters (Zürich, 1976), pp. 53-61, 122, cat. no. 3.
Les Fastes du Gothique: le siècle de Charles V, ed. by F. Baron, exhibition catalogue, Paris, Grand Palais, 1981, p. 173.
S. L. Smith, The Power of Women. A Topos in Medieval Literature and Art (Philadelphia, 1994), p. 169-86.
J. Rushing, ‘Adventure in the Service of Love: Yvain on a Fourteenth-Century Ivory Panel’, Zeitschrift fur Kunstgeschichte, Vol. 61 (1998), pp. 55-65.
P. M. Shoppe, Reading Romances. The Production and Reception of French Gothic Secular Ivory Caskets in the Context of Late Medieval Literary Practices (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, 2000), pp. 162, 211.
Moyen Âge: entre ordre et désordre, exhibition catalogue, Paris, Musée de la Musique, March-June 2004, no. 90 (M. Clouzot).
P. M. Carns, 'Compilatio in Ivory: The Composite Casket in the Metropolitan Museum', in Gesta, 44/2 (2005), p. 85, note 3.
M. Meuwese, 'Chrétien in Ivory', in Arthurian Literature XXV (2008), pp. 119-152 (pp. 128,133).
La Légende du roi Arthur, dir. by T. Delcourt, exhibition catalogue, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, 2009, pp. 144-145.
Imagining the Past in France. History in Manuscript Painting, 1250-1500, exhibition catalogue, Los Angeles, J. P. Getty Museum, 2010, p. 283.
P. M. Carns, 'Floire et Blancheflor: Gothic Secular Ivories and the Arts of Memory', in Studies in Iconography 32 (2011), p. 247, note 3, pp. 265-66.
P. M. Carns, 'A curious collection in ivory: the Lord Gort Casket', in Collections in Context: the Organization of Knowledge and Community in Europe, ed. by K. Fresco and A. D. Hedeman (Columbus (Ohio), 2012), pp. 22, 25.
The Romance of the Middle Ages, exhibition catalogue, Oxford, Bodleian Library, 2012, pp. 22, 25.
P. Williamson and G. Davies, Medieval Ivory Carvings 1200-1550 (London, 2014), no. 227.


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