Gothic Ivories Project | Two oval openwork medallions (médaillons ajourés) (Back)

Left
Seated Virgin and Child; angel crowning the Virgin; Virgin holding a stem of flowers; seated saint John the Evangelist with a martyr's palm and the poisoned cup; saint Catherine of Alexandria with wheel and martyr's palm; angel crowning saint Catherine; angels; thrones; flowers.
Right
Saint George and the dragon; princess praying; king and queen beside their castle; two onlookers; angel holding saint George's helmet; sheep; river; God the Father with papal tiara making a blessing gesture; saint John the Baptist holding the Lamb of God (Agnus Dei); camel hide; unidentified male bearded saint holding an open book (possibly saint John the Evangelist?).

Paris 2004: France (Paris), c. 1400-1420
Museum's opinion 2012: France (Paris), c. 1420.

Attribution
Unknown

Polychromy - Gilding
Extensive gilding and polychromy: green (grass; palms; clothes, angels' wings), blue (clothes, sky), red (clothes), pink (wings, flowers; clothes), white (horse; skin; sheep; books; beards), brown (hair); silver (oxidised: river; helmet; wings, etc.), gold (throne, halo; dresses; foliated background; stars, etc.).

Reverse
Flat and smooth.

Object Condition
Missing: parts of the openwork background in the Virgin and Child medallion.

Comments
These medallions were probably originally mounted under crystal covers as part of a locket reliquary (see later mount). Panofsky (1951) believes that these medallions were by the same atelier as another medallion in the MET Museum collection (17.190.894).

Provenance
Collection of J. Pierpont Morgan (d. 1913), London and New York; Estate of J. Pierpont Morgan (1913-1917); gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1917.

Bibliography
The Pierpont Morgan wing: a handbook by Joseph Breck and Meyric Rogers (New York, 1929), 2nd ed., p. 127.
E. Panofsky, 'A Parisian Goldsmith's Model of the Early Fifteenth Century?', in Beiträge für Georg Swarzenski zum 11. Januar 1951, ed. by O. Goetz (Berlin, 1951), p. 81.
R. Koch, 'An Ivory Diptych from the Waning Middle Ages', in Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University, XVII, no. 2 (1958), pp. 55 - 64, fig. 8.
J. Rasmussen, 'Untersuchungen zum Halleschen Heiltum des Kardinals Albrecht von Brandenburg', in Münchner Jahrbuch der bildenden Kunst 28 (1977), pp. 91-132 (p. 129, n. 409).
R. Didier, in Bulletin monumental 132-2 (1980), p. 201.
R. Randall, 'Jan van Eyck and the St. George Ivories', in the Walters Art Gallery Journal, 39 (1981), pp. 39-48 (p. 39).
R. H. Randall, Masterpieces of Ivory from the Walters Art Gallery (New York, 1985), p. 188.
D. Gaborit-Chopin, Ivoires médiévaux, Ve-XVe siècle (Paris: Musée du Louvre, 2003), fig. 235a.
Paris 1400. Les Arts sous Charles VI, exhibition catalogue, Paris, Musée du Louvre, 2004, no. 123.
P. Williamson and G. Davies, Medieval Ivory Carvings 1200-1550 (London, 2014), p. 463, in relation to no. 159.

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