Side 1: winged God of Love in a tree aiming arrows at lovers; couple kneeling; youth with a hawk on his wrist.
Side 2: courting couple (meeting of lovers); youth with a hawk on his wrist; youth crowning his lover with a chaplet.
Pointed trefoils in the spandrels.
Koechlin 1924: France, 1st half of 14th century.
Little 2003: Paris, c. 1325-1350.
Museum opinion 2012: Paris, c. 1325-1350
Attribution
Unknown
Reverse
Carved on both sides.
Object Condition
Hole in the upper part probably for attachment to another cover and intervening tablets.
Provenance
Collection of Ludwig zu Oettingen Wallerstein (probably before 1824); Princes of Oettingen-Wallerstein, by descent; bought by the Museum in 2003.
Bibliography
A. von Eye and J. von Falcke, Kunst und Leben der Vorzeit (Nuremberg, 1858), vol. I, pl. XLVII.
J. Alois Kuhn, Katalog für die Ausstellung der Werke älterer Meister (Munich, [1876]), pt II: Katalog der Kunst und Kunstindustrie-Ausstellung alter und neuer deutscher Meister, pl. LXXXI.
G. Grupp, Kulturgeschichte des Mittelalters (Stuttgart, 1892), II, p. 402.
R. Koechlin, Les Ivoires gothiques français (Paris, 1924), I, pp. 433, 436, 441; II, nos. 1221 and 1221bis; III, pl. CC.
L. Grodecki, Ivoires français (Paris, 1947), p.117.
M. Müller, Minnebilder. Französische Minnedarstellungen des 13. und 14. Jahrhunderts (Cologne, 1996), pp. 41, 119-200, figs. 29 & 119.
Charles T. Little, 'Recent Acquisitions: A Selection 2002-2003' in The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, Vol. 61, No. 2 (Autumn, 2003), p. 13.
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