Attribution
Unknown

Polychromy - Gilding
Traces of gilding and polychromy: gold (hair and beard, crown, halo), red (God the Father's cloak).

Reverse
Flat with some crosshatching.
Handwritten inscription: 'Nr. 1424'. Blue and white label with handwritten inscription: '401'.

Object Condition
Missing: head of Christ (later replacement), most of God the Father's halo.
Virgin's crown and halo chipped.
Cracks.
According to Koechlin, the Virgin's head has been reworked, though Berliner disagrees.

Comments
Carved in high relief. According to Berliner, the composition is not a manifestation of the Virgin's closeness to the Holy Trinity but is related to Mechthild of Magdeburg's visions of the incarnation's redemptive powers (cf. Beissel 1909 and Mechthild 1877).

Provenance
Acquired by the Museum before 1877.

Bibliography
Mechthild of Magdeburg. 'Lux divinitatis,' in Revelationes Gertrudianae ac Mechtildianae II, ed. S. Monks (Paris, 1877), p. 453.
Das Mittelalter. II, Gotische Alterthümer der Baukunst und Bildnerei, by H. Graf, G. Hager and J. A. Mayer (Munich, 1896), VI, no. 1406, pl. XXVIII.
O.M. Dalton, Catalogue of the ivory carvings of the Christian era of the British Museum (London, 1909), p. 108.
S. Beissel, Geschichte der Verehrung Marias in Deutschland während des Mittelalters. Ein Beitrag zur Religionswissenschaft und Kunstgeschichte (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1909), pp. 286-7.
R. Koechlin, Les Ivoires gothiques français (Paris, 1924), I, p. 319; II, no. 848.
R. Berliner, Die Bildwerke des Bayerischen Nationalmuseums, IV. Die Bildwerke in Elfenbein, Knochen, Hirsch- und Steinbockhorn, mit einem Anhange: Elfenbeinarbeiten der Staatlichen Schlossmuseen in Bayern (Augsburg, 1926), no. 37.
J. Leeuwenberg, 'Early Nineteenth-Century Gothic Ivories', in Aachener Kunstblätter, 39 (1969), pp. 111-148 (p. 135 n. 58).
J. Thinesse, Appendix zum Elfenbeinkatalog Rudolf Berliners, unpublished MA dissertation, Munich, 1977 (Typescript), p. 28.