Register 1: Annunciation; vase of lilies; dove of the Holy Spirit. Adoration of the Magi with Joseph. Presentation in the Temple; Christ standing on the altar between the Virgin and Simeon; Joseph holding a basket of doves brought as offerings.
Register 2: saint Peter holding a book and a key; Christ holding the orb and cross; saint Paul holding a book and a sword.
In niches: musician angels (bagpipes; psaltery; flute; rebec; trumpet; triangle); saints and apostles including saint James the Greater (?) with a pilgrim's staff and saint Andrew with a saltire cross.
Tracery. Bands of pierced quatrefoils. Roped border.
Molinier 1896: English.
Koechlin 1924: France, beginning of the 15th century.
Longhurst 1929: France, beginning of the 15th century.
Leeuwenberg 1969: France, last quarter of the 18th century to 1st half of the 19th century.
Williamson and Davies 2014: Northern French or Paris (?), probably late 14th century.
Attribution
Master of the Agrafe Forgeries (Leeuwenberg 1969)
Reverse
Flat and smooth.
Object Condition
Some damage in the canopies.
Top edge scored for adhesion.
Provenance
In the possession of John Webb (b. 1799, d. 1880), London (by 1862): purchased from him by the Museum in 1865.
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. 181.
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. 32.
W. Maskell, Ivories Ancient and Mediaeval in the South Kensington Museum (London, 1872), no. 45.
E. Molinier, Histoire générale des Arts appliqués à l'Industrie (Paris, 1896), I: Les Ivoires, p. 200.
A. Maskell, Ivories (Connoisseurs Library), (London, 1905), p. 154, pl. XXVII.
R. Koechlin, Histoire de l'art depuis les premiers temps chrétiens jusqu'à nos jours, ed. by A. Michel, II (Paris, 1906), Pt. I, p. 202.
R. Koechlin, Les Ivoires gothiques français (Paris, 1924), I, pp. 322-324, 326; II, no. 859.
M. Longhurst, Catalogue of Carvings in Ivory, Victoria and Albert Museum, 2 vols (London, 1927 and 1929), II (1929), pp. 36-7, pl. XXXIV.
L. Grodecki, Ivoires français (Paris, 1947), p. 107.
The International Style: The Arts of Europe around 1400, ed. by P. Verdier, exhibition catalogue, Baltimore, Walters Art Gallery, 1962, pp. 105, 119.
O. Beigbeder, Ivory (New York, 1965), p. 55, fig. 49.
J. Leeuwenberg, 'Early Nineteenth-Century Gothic Ivories', in Aachener Kunstblätter, 39 (1969), pp. 111-148 (pp. 122, 144, fig. 22)
P. Williamson and G. Davies, Medieval Ivory Carvings 1200-1550 (London, 2014), no. 181.
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