Inv. 71.268
Couple playing chess; courting couple; lady holding two chess pieces in her left hand; man with his left hand around the tree.
Corner terminals: crouching monsters.
Masks in the spandrels.
Koechlin 1924: France, 1st half of the 14th century.
Randall 1985 and Museum's opinion 2010: German (?), mid-14th century
Attribution
Unknown
Reverse
Back turned with a depression for (missing) mirror.
Object Condition
Damaged as a result of having been buried.
Comments
A cast was made of this piece in the 19th century and one of these casts is now Courtauld Institute of Art, Witt and Conway Library, no. 276.
Provenance
Collection of Freiherr von Wambolt, Aschaffenburg (in 1847). Jakob von Hefner-Alteneck, Munich: sold, Munich, 6-7 June 1904, lot 308. Bought by Henry Walters from Léon Gruel in Paris in 1925; Walters Art Museum, 1931, by bequest.
Bibliography
Hefner-Alteneck, Trachten III (1882), pl. 158.
R. Koechlin, Les Ivoires gothiques français (Paris, 1924), I, pp. 387, 388; II, no. 1043.
R. H. Randall, Masterpieces of Ivory from the Walters Art Gallery (New York, 1985), no. 331.
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