Standing Virgin and Child (Vierge glorieuse); Christ seated on left arm; Christ in long robe; Christ holding a fruit in his left hand; blessing gesture.
Gilded inscription around the base: "AVE MAR [ria gratia ple]NA DOMINUS TE(CVM)" (Luke, I, 28).
Koechlin 1924: France, end of the 3rd quarter of the 13th century.
Longhurst 1929: France, 2nd half of the 13th century.
Williamson and Davies 2014: France (Paris or Amiens), c. 1240. Attributed to the same artist as the so-called 'Davillier Virgin' in the Louvre.
Attribution
Unknown
Polychromy - Gilding
Traces of polychromy and gilding: gold (pattern along the hems of the Virgin's cloak, gold cross on Virgin's upper chest), blue (inside of the Virgin's gown), red (inside of the Virgin's cloak); floral pattern (back of Christ's tunic).
Reverse
Carved in the round.
Object Condition
Missing: crown (originally metal, remains of two metal pins); front of the Virgin's head chipped (removal of crown?); right hand and forearm of the Virgin.
Comments
Underside: circular hole, probably to secure it to a base.
Provenance
In the possession of John Webb (b. 1799, d. 1880), London, by 1862; purchased from Webb 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. 105.
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. 12.
W. Maskell, Ivories Ancient and Mediaeval in the South Kensington Museum (London, 1872), no. 209-67.
W. Griggs, Portfolio of Ivories [London, 1904-1907], pt. XXIII.
R. Koechlin, Les Ivoires gothiques français (Paris, 1924), I, p. 62; II, no. 21; III, pl. X.
M. Longhurst, Catalogue of Carvings in Ivory, Victoria and Albert Museum, 2 vols (London, 1927 and 1929), II (1929), p. 29, pl. XXVII.
L. Grodecki, Ivoires français (Paris, 1947), p. 83.
The Decorated Page. Eight Hundred Years of Illuminated Manuscripts and Books, ed. by exhibition catalogue, London, Victoria and Albert Museum, 1971, no. 250.
M. Seidel, 'Die Elfenbeinmadonna im Domschatz zu Pisa', in Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, 16 (1972), pp. 1-50 (pp. 12-13, figs 12-13).
European Sculpture at the Victoria and Albert Museum, ed. by P. Williamson (London, 1996), p. 52.
D. Gaborit-Chopin, 'Paris ou Amiens? Le Groupe de la Vierge Davillier', in Études d’histoire de l’art offertes à Jacques Thirion, ed. by A. Erlande-Brandenburg and J.-M. Leniaud (Paris, 2001), pp. 85-98 (pp. 87-89, 96, figs 6-8).
D. Gaborit-Chopin, Ivoires médiévaux, Ve-XVe siècle (Paris: Musée du Louvre, 2003), p. 280, fig. 94a.
S. M. Guérin, 'Tears of Compunction': French Gothic Ivories in Devotional Practice (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Toronto, 2009), pp. 133 (note 37), 315, 320, fig. 3-8.
P. Williamson and G. Davies, Medieval Ivory Carvings 1200-1550 (London, 2014), no. 2.
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