London 1923: French, late 14th or early 15th century.
Leeuwenberg 1969: France (?), last quarter of the 18th century to 1st half of the 19th century.
Museum's opinion 2009: French, c. 1400.
Attribution
Master of the Agrafe Forgeries (Leeuwenberg 1969)
Polychromy - Gilding
Traces of gilding and polychromy.
Reverse
The reverse is painted (16th century?): the right wing features the Annunciation, the left wing the Baptism of Christ.
Comments
This openwork triptych is bound in a wooden case in the form of a diptych. The centre of the triptych forming the left leaf and the right and left wings forming the right leaf. An initial 'M', possibly made of metal (?) featured beside the kneeling donor on early photographs of this piece.
Provenance
Collection of Martin Heckscher, Vienna: sold, Christie's, London, 4-6 May 1898, lot 268; bought by C. Davis for £250; collection of Sir Julius Wernher (d. 1912), Bath House, London; collection of Lady Ludlow (in 1923); on loan to English Heritage and displayed at Ranger's House since 2002.
Bibliography
Catalogue of an Exhibition of Carvings in Ivory, exhibition catalogue, London, Burlington Fine Arts Club, 1923, no. 156.
J. Leeuwenberg, 'Early Nineteenth-Century Gothic Ivories', in Aachener Kunstblätter, 39 (1969), pp. 111-148 (p. 137 n. 62).
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. 610-11, in relation to no. 188.
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