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Casket of Queen Jadgwiga of Poland (coffret) (End, left)

Casket of Queen Jadgwiga of Poland (coffret) (End, left)
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Front, detail

Lid, detail

End, left

Lid

End, right

Back

End, right


Front

Back

Front, detail

Front, detail

Back, detail

Back, detail

Front, detail


Front

Front, detail

Lid, detail

Lid, detail

Lid, detail

Back, detail

Back, detail

Lid

Subject
Secular. Courtly love. Romance.


Cracow, Cathedral Treasury

S/n

Ivory;engraved silver (original mounts);enamel

Lid
Elopement; lady and youth on horseback; bridge; couple in a boat; youth chucking his lover under the chin; servant rowing; courting couples (meeting of lovers); offering of a chaplet on the castle battlements; offering of a flower.
Tournament; ladies and youths observing the jousting knights in armour from the castle battlements; lady holding a dog; couple embracing; two heralds in trees blowing trumpets; shields.
Attack on the Castle of Love; knights in armour assaulting the castle; ladies throwing roses on the attackers; ladder; catapult to throw baskets of roses.
Body, front
Scenes of Alexander and Pyramus.
Aristotle teaching Alexander; Aristotle ridden by Phyllis, observed by Alexander; Thisbe and the lion; death of Pyramus and Thisbe.
End, left
Tristan and Iseult conversing; king Mark in the tree; fountain reflecting king Mark's face; Tristan with a hawk on his wrist; dog on Iseult's lap. Capture of the unicorn; man spearing the unicorn; maiden holding a mirror.
End, right
Knight in armour delivering a lady from a wild man; the knight kills the wild man with his spear. Knight and an old man (hermit?) holding a key.
Body, back
Gawain in armour fighting the lion. Lancelot crossing the sword bridge, with spears falling from the sky. Gawain on the perilous bed; bed on wheels and with bells; shield with a lion's paw; spears falling from the sky. The three maidens at the Château Merveil.
Towers. Brickwork.


Koechlin Number: 1285

Koechlin 1924: France, 1st half of the 14th century.
Detroit 1997: France (Paris), late 14th century.


Attribution
Atelier of the Cracow casket (eponymous piece)

Reverse
Carved on all sides.

Provenance
Queen Jadwiga of Poland (b. 1371, d. 1399), former princess of Hungary, who married Wlasdislaw Jagiello II in 1386; deposited as a reliquary in a chapel of Cracow Cathedral at an early date. According to Koechlin, the piece was found in 1881 by canon Polkowski in a cabinet in the cathedral which had been closed since 1602.

Bibliography
J. von Antoniewicz, 'Ikonographisches zu Chrestien de Troyes', Romanische Forschungen, Festschrift Konrad Hofmann zum 70sten Geburtstag, vol. 5 (1890), pl. V, p. 252.
R. Koechlin, Les Ivoires gothiques français (Paris, 1924), I, pp. 34, 409, 477, 485, 489, 490, 497, 501, 505; II, no. 1285.
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 (p. 137, pl. 31d).
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, pp. 64-65, 66, 67, 248.
D. Gaborit-Chopin, Ivoires médiévaux, Ve-XVe siècle (Paris: Musée du Louvre, 2003), fig. 158b and c (in relation to no. 158).
P. Williamson and G. Davies, Medieval Ivory Carvings 1200-1550 (London, 2014), in relation to no. 227.


Image

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