Gothic Ivories Project | Casket (coffret) (Body, back)

Lid
Attack on the Castle of Love; knights in armour assaulting the castle; couples throwing flowers from the castle battlements; queen holding a sword; elopement; couple eloping on horseback; bridge decorated with rosettes; couple in a boat; knight chucking his lover under the chin; trees. Tournament; youth with a hawk on his wrist; couples observing the jousting knights in armour from a balcony; two heralds blowing trumpets; horses; helm decorated with a bird; shields; lattice pattern on the balcony; queen holding a dog. Attack on the Castle of Love; knights in armour assaulting the castle; ladies making a wreath; ladies pouring baskets of roses on the attackers; ladies throwing flowers from the battlements; catapult to throw baskets of roses; knights brandishing stems of flowers; knight climbing a ladder.
Body, front
Aristotle teaching Alexander; tent. Phyllis riding Aristotle, Alexander watching from the castle battlements. Pyramus and Thisbe; Thisbe and the lion; Thisbe finds refuge from the lion in a tree; lion with a piece of Thisbe's veil in its mouth. Death of Pyramus and Thisbe; fountain.
End, right
A knight in armour and on horseback delivers a lady from a wild man; the knight kills the wild man with his spear. Galahad receives the key of the castle of maidens; trees.
Body, back
Gawain in armour fighting the lion. Lancelot crossing the sword bridge, with spears falling from the sky. Gawain on the perilous bed; bed on wheels and with bells; shield with a lion paw; spears falling from the sky. The three maidens at the Château Merveil.
End, left
Tristan and Iseult conversing; dog on Iseult's lap; Tristan with a hawk on his wrist; king Mark in the tree; fountain reflecting king Mark's face; fountain decorated with lion heads. Capture of the unicorn; hunter spearing the unicorn; maiden holding a mirror.
Replacement front panel
Aristotle teaching Alexander. Phyllis riding Aristotle. Fountain of Youth.

Molinier 1890: France, 14th century.
Molinier 1904: France, 14th century.
Koechlin 1924: France, 1st quarter of the 14th century.
New York 1975: France, 14th century.
New York 1980-1981: Paris, mid-14th century.
Randall 1985: France, 1330-1350.
Museum's opinion 2012: France (Paris), circa 1320-1340.

Attribution
Unknown

Reverse
Carved on all sides.

Object Condition
As the front panel was only reunited with the others in 1988, another panel featuring the Fountain of Youth acted as a replacement panel (see certain older photographs).

Comments
The original front panel was acquired in 1988 by the museum separately from the other parts of this casket, hence the two different inventory numbers.

Provenance
Front panel (1988.16)
Private collection, Sevenoaks, Kent, England. Collection of Alain Moatti, Paris; bought from him by the Museum in 1988.
All other panels (17.190.173)
Sir Francis Douce (b. 1754, d. 1824); Samuel Rush Meyrick; collection of Frédéric Spitzer (b. 1815, d. 1890), Paris: his sale, Chevallier and Mannheim, Paris, 17 April 1893, lot 114 (P. Chevallier, Catalogue des objets d'art de haute curiosité: Antiques du moyen-âge et de la Renaissance, composant l'importante et précieuse Collection Spitzer (Paris, 1893), no. 114); Collection of Baron Albert Oppenheim, Cologne: sale 1906; collection of J. Pierpont Morgan (d. 1913), London and New York; estate of J. Pierpont Morgan (1913-1917); gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1917.

Bibliography
S. R. Meyrick, 'The Doucean Museum', in Gentlemen's Magazine (April 1836), I, p. 383, no. 11.
W. Maskell, Ivories Ancient and Mediaeval in the South Kensington Museum (London, 1872), Appendix, pp. 176-177, no. 7.
La Collection Spitzer (Paris, 1890), I, p. 52, no. 79 (E. Molinier).
Exposition rétrospective de l'art français des origines à 1800, exhibition catalogue, Paris, Petit Palais, 1900, no. 165.
E. Molinier, Collection du Baron Albert Oppenheim, tableaux et objets d'art (Paris, 1904), p. 32, no. 71, pl. LIV.
R. Koechlin, 'Ivoires gothiques connus antérieurement au XIXe siècle', in Revue de l'art chrétien, 59 (1911), pp. 22 and 25 of special reprint, ill. figs. 22-26.
R. S. Loomis, 'A medieval ivory casket', in Art in America, 5-1 (1916), pp. 19-27, fig.3.
R. Koechlin, 'Quelques groupes d'ivoires francais: le dieu d'amour et le château d'amour', in Gazette des Beaux-Arts 63 (1921), p. 295.
R. Koechlin, Les Ivoires gothiques français (Paris, 1924), I, pp. 409, 485, 489, 490, 491, 497, 501, 505; II, no. 1284.
T. T. Hoopes, 'An Ivory casket in the Metropolitan Museum of Art', in The Art Bulletin, vol. VIII, no. 3 (1926), pp. 127-139, figs. 1-4.
The Pierpont Morgan wing: a handbook by J. Breck and M. Rogers (New York, 1929), 2nd ed., pp. 110-111.
R. S. Loomis, Arthurian Legends in Medieval Art (London, 1938), pp. 66, 70, 72, 76, figs. 122, 137.
M. R. Scherer, About the Round Table (New York, 1945), pp. 42-45, 54-55, 68-69.
D. J. A. Ross, 'Allegory and Romance on a Mediaeval French Marriage Casket', in Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 11 (1948), pp. 112-142 (especially p. 136).
O. Beigbeder, 'Les Héros Romanesques des Ivoires Médiévaux Français', in Connaissance des Arts (February 1959), pp. 26-31.
The Secular Spirit: Life and Art at the End of the Middle Ages, exhibition catalogue, New York, The Cloisters, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1975, no. 10.
W. D. Wixom, 'Eleven Additions to Medieval Collection', in The Bulletin of Cleveland Museum of Art (March-April 1979), pp. 110-126.
The Wild Man. Medieval Myth and Symbolism, ed. by T. Husband, exhibition catalogue, New York, The Cloisters, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1980-1981, no. 11.
R. Randall, Masterpieces of Ivory from the Walters Art Gallery (New York, 1985), p. 181.
Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, Notable Acquisitions: A Selection 1987-1988, p. 16.
One Hundred Eighteenth Annual Report of the Trustees for the Fiscal Year July 1, 1987 through June 30, 1988, Metropolitan Museum of Art (1988) p. 33, mentioned as a purchase.
M. T. Bruckner, 'Reconstructing Arthurian History: Lancelot and the Vulgate Cycle', in Memory in the Middle Ages (Boston, 1995), pp. 66-67, fig. 25.
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, pp. 63-79, ill. pp. 67, 68.
L'art au temps des rois maudits: Philippe le Bel et ses fils (1285-1328), exhibition catalogue, Paris, Grand Palais, 1998, no. 101.
Mirror of the Medieval World, exhibition catalogue, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1999, no. 156, pp. 133-135 (C. T. Little).
P. M. Shoppe, Reading Romances. The Production and Reception of French Gothic Secular Ivory Caskets in the Context of Late Medieval Literary Practices (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, 2000), esp. pp. 162-203.
P. M. Carns, 'Compilation in Ivory: The Composite Casket in the Metropolitan Museum', in Gesta, 44/2 (2005), pp. 69-88.
E. L'Estrange, 'Gazing at Gawain: Reconsidering Tournaments, Courtly Love, and the Lady Who Looks', in Medieval Feminist Forum 44, no. 2 (2008), pp. 74-96 (pp. 82, 83, 85, 94-95, fig. 4-5, 7). Available at: http://ir.uiowa.edu/mff/vol44/iss2/11 (accessed 10-10-2012).
P. Williamson and G. Davies, Medieval Ivory Carvings 1200-1550 (London, 2014), in relation to no. 227 and 228.

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