Gothic Ivories Project | Box, 1 register, 3 arches across (frise d'arcatures) (Lid (Inv. 71.283A))

Sliding lid:
Courting couple (meeting of lovers); youth chucking his lover under the chin; lady holding a dog; fashionable dress; couple in the background; youth with a hawk on his wrist; walled city; ladies on the city walls.
Bottom of the box:
Courting couple in a tent (meeting of lovers); youth chucking his lover under the chin; lady with a hawk on her wrist; couple seated under a tree; offering of a chaplet (gift of a chaplet); hermit reading outside his cell; walled city.

Ann Arbor 1975: French, last quarter of the 14th century.
Randall 1985: North French (?), 3rd quarter of the 14th century. Attributed to the Atelier of the Boxes.
Detroit 1997 and Museum's opinion 2010: North French, 1340-1360.

Attribution
Atelier of the Boxes (Randall 1985)

Reverse
Bottom of the box: recessed with a raised border on all sides. Lid of the box: reverse divided into 5 compartments, the central one being circular (all partitions have now been cut away, leaving the surface smooth). Double moulding framing both recessed areas on the back of the lid and inside of the box.

Object Condition
Central hole in the upper part of each half of the box.

Comments
The sliding lid of the box is Inv. 71.283A and the bottom of the box is Inv. 71.283B. Its original use is not known although W. Levin suggested it could have been used for wax (Ann Arbor, 1975, p. 112).
The inside of the box is a sunken receptacle; the inner surface of the lid was originally divided into five compartments, the centre one circular possibly for a mirror (hypothesis put forward by Verdier in 1962), the others formed by four raised bands at right angles to each other, all have now been cut away, leaving the surface smooth.

Provenance
Sale, Cologne, 14 December 1893, lot 92. Marcus Antocolsky collection, Paris: Antocolsky sale, Drouot, 10 June 1901, lot 73. Collection of George Robinson Harding, London; bought, London, 15 June 1901, by Henry Walters; Walters Art Museum, 1931, by bequest.

Bibliography
R. Koechlin, Les Ivoires gothiques français (Paris, 1924), II, p. 420 (in relation to no. 1181 and 1182).
The International Style: The Arts of Europe around 1400, ed. by P. Verdier, exhibition catalogue, Baltimore, Walters Art Gallery, 1962, no. 111.
Images of Love and Death in Renaissance and Late Medieval Art, exhibition catalogue, ed. by W. R. Levin, Ann Harbor, University of Michigan, Nov. 1975-Jan. 1976, no. 75, pl. VI.
R. H. Randall, Masterpieces of Ivory from the Walters Art Gallery (New York, 1985), no. 339.
R. H. Randall, 'Medieval Ivories in the Romance tradition', in Gesta, 28 (1989), pp. 30-40.
P. Jolly, 'Crosscurrents in the Mid-Trecento French Medieval Ivories and the Camposanto, Pisa', in Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 118 (November 1991), pp. 161-170 (p. 165).
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, p. 76, fig. V-7.
P. Mae Carns, 'Having the last laugh: the fabliau of 'The knight with the red robe' in carved ivory', in The Burlington Magazine, vol. CLII, no. 1292 (November 2010), pp. 712-715 (p. 713, fig. 2a-b).
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. 589-90, in relation to no. 176.

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