Side 1: Fountain of Youth; old and young; cripple with crutches; couple bathing; musician jester playing the bagpipes; courting couple (meeting of lovers); offering of a flower.
Side 2: Hunting scene; hunter on foot; hunter with a spear; hunter blowing a horn; dogs pursuing a stag; hare; trees.
Border with roped pattern; vine border with grapes.
Griggs 1904-1907: Italy (Piedmont), 15th century.
Koechlin 1924: France, mid 15th century.
Longhurst 1929: France, mid 15th century.
Williamson and Davies 2014: Upper Rhenish or Burgundian (?), 2nd quarter of the 15th century.
Attribution
Unknown
Polychromy - Gilding
Extensive traces of gilding and polychromy: gold (highlights; along the hems; hair; fountain), red (shoes; hat; mouth; grapes), blue (grapes; water), brown (hair), green (trees; clothes).
Reverse
Carved on both sides.
Object Condition
One tooth missing from the upper range. Worn.
Provenance
In the possession of John Webb (b. 1799, d. 1880), London, by 1862: purchased from him by the Museum in 1867.
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. 147.
Inventory of Art Objects acquired in the Year 1867. 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. 6.
W. Maskell, Ivories Ancient and Mediaeval in the South Kensington Museum (London, 1872), p. 88.
W. Griggs, Portfolio of Ivories [London, 1904-1907], pt. XVII.
A. Maskell, Ivories (Connoisseurs Library), (London, 1905), pl. LI, p. 236.
F. Winter, Die Kämmer aller Zeiten (1906), pl. 39, 40, nos. 113, 114.
R. Koechlin, Les Ivoires gothiques français (Paris, 1924), I, pp. 428, 507, 525; II, no. 1151; III, pl. CXCIII.
M. Longhurst, Catalogue of Carvings in Ivory, Victoria and Albert Museum, 2 vols (London, 1927 and 1929), II (1929), p. 54, pl. XLIX.
O. Beigbeder, Ivory (New York, 1965), fig. 66.
A. Rapp, Der Jungbrünnen in Literatur und bildender Kunst des Mittelalters (Zürich, 1976), pp. 85, 126, no. 14.
J. Cherry and J. Lowden, Medieval Ivories and Works of Art: The Thomson Collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto, 2008), p. 125.
J. Saviello, ‘Instrumente der Ordnung’, in P. Cordez and M. Kruger (eds), Werkzeuge und Instrumente (Berlin, 2012), pp. 56-58, fig. 7.
P. Williamson and G. Davies, Medieval Ivory Carvings 1200-1550 (London, 2014), no. 215.
J. Warren, Medieval and Renaissance Sculpture in the Ashmolean Museum, 3 vols (Oxford, 2014), Vol. 2: Sculptures in Stone, Clay, Ivory, Bone and Wood, pp. 599-60, in relation to no. 182.
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