Gothic Ivories Project | Wing, left (part of a diptych), 3 registers, 5 arches across, bands of roses (frise d'arcatures; décor de roses) (Front)

Register 1: Annunciation; vase of lilies; dove of the Holy Spirit; Adoration of the Magi.
Register 2: Deposition with the Virgin holding Christ's hand; Joseph of Arimathea holding Christ's body; man with pincers removing the nail from Christ's feet; cruciform halo; onlookers including saint John the Evangelist.
Register 3: Entombment (Anointing of Christ's body); tomb decorated with row of blind arches; Resurrection with two soldiers asleep; tomb decorated with quatrefoils.

Molinier 1890: French, 14th century.
Koechlin 1924: French (?), 19th century.
Detroit 1997 and Museum's opinion 2010: France (Paris), before 1893.

Attribution
Unknown

Hinges
Three broken hinges on the right side.

Comments
This left wing is a fake replacement wing that Frédéric Spitzer had made when he acquired the original right wing (see Spitzer catalogue, no. 66 and 1900 exhibition, no. 132). The fake and the original wings share the same inventory number in the Walters Art Museum collection: 71.156. The genuine left wing is now in the Musée des Beaux Arts in Lyon. See related objects.

Provenance
Frédéric Spitzer collection, Paris (no. 66): sold, Chevallier and Mannheim, Paris, 17 April 1893, lot 101; collection of Sigismond Bardac (in 1900); bought by Henry Walters from Jacques Seligmann in 1912 in Paris; Walters Art Museum, 1931, by bequest.

Bibliography
La Collection Spitzer (Paris, 1890), I, no. 66 (E. Molinier).
Exposition Universelle de 1900, Catalogue illustré Officiel de l'Exposition Rétrospective de l'Art Français (Paris, 1900), no. 132, p. 18 (in Bardac collection).
R. Koechlin, Les Ivoires gothiques français (Paris, 1924), II, p. 310.
D. Rosen, 'Photomacrographs as Aids in the Study of Decorative Arts', in Journal of the Walters Art Gallery, XV-XVI (1952-1953), figs 2-4.
Images in Ivory. Precious Objects of the Gothic Age, ed. by Peter Barnet, exhibition catalogue, Detroit, The Detroit Institute of Arts, and Baltimore, The Walters Art Gallery, 1997, no. 45 and 89, pp. 206-207, 299-300.
S. Guérin, 'An ivory Virgin at the Metropolitan Museum, New York, in a Gothic sculptor's oeuvre', in The Burlington Magazine 1311, Vol. CLIV (June 2012), pp. 394-402 (p. 402 footnote).
J. Warren, Medieval and Renaissance Sculpture in the Ashmolean Museum, 3 vols (Oxford, 2014), Vol. 2: Sculptures in Stone, Clay, Ivory, Bone and Wood, p. 571, in relation to no. 165.

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