Gothic Ivories Project | Casket (coffret) (Lid)

Lid
Knight kneeling before a lady who places a helm over his head; attendants holding lances; lady holding a shield; castle. Tournament; ladies and youths including a queen observing the jousting knights in armour from a balcony; couples on a covered balcony with lozenge pattern and six arches; lady holding a dog; youth with a hawk on his wrist; two heralds in trees blowing trumpets. Knight kneeling before a lady who places a helm over his head; courting couples on the castle battlements; portcullis.
Body, front
Aristotle teaching Alexander. Aristotle ridden by Phyllis, observed by Alexander and other onlookers from the castle battlements; tree. 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; Thisbe discovers the dying Pyramus; Thisbe kills herself with Pyramus' sword; fountain.
End, right
Knight in armour and wild man fighting over a maiden (Enyas and the Woodhouse?); knight on horseback; trees.
Body, back
Gawain (or Lancelot) in armour fighting the lion; Lancelot crossing the sword bridge, with spears falling from the sky; Gawain on the perilous bed; bed on wheels; lion; spears falling from the sky; the three maidens at the Château Merveil.
End, left
Tristan and Iseult conversing; king Mark in the tree; fountain reflecting king Mark's face; Tristan with a hawk on his wrist; dog on Iseult's lap. Capture of the unicorn; man in a tree spearing the unicorn; maiden holding a mirror.

Koechlin 1924: France, 1st half of the 14th century.
Young 1947: French, early 14th century.
Museum's opinion 2012: France (Paris), c. 1310- 1340

Attribution
Unknown

Reverse
Carved on all sides.Label on the inside of the lid: 'This curious casket belonged to Francis Annesley, 1st Viscount Valentia, Lord Privy Seal to James the Ist of England'. Label on the bottom in the same hand: 'For The Lord Viscount Valentia, Bletchington Park, Oxford. 1880'.

Object Condition
Deep horizontal cracks across the lid and in the lower left corner of the lid.
Missing: piece of ivory between the 2nd and 3rd arches from the right on the lid; flange at left end of the back panel (perhaps trimmed during remounting); 2 pieces from bottom corners of the back panel.
Metal bands are modern replacements.

Provenance
Said to have belonged to Francis Annesley, 1st Viscount Valentia (1595- 1660), Lord Deputy of Ireland and Lord Privy Seal to King James I (label on inside of lid); Collection of Charles Warde (d. 1861), Squerryes Court, Westerham, Kent, probably acquired via his mother, a member of the Annesley family; bequeathed to his sister Mrs W. St. John-Mildmay who owned it by the 1862 South Kensington Exhibition; later (by 1880) passed back to the Valentia family, Bletchington Park, Oxford (label on bottom of casket); purchased by the Institute at Sotheby's, London, 13 December 1939, lot 47 (£820).

Bibliography
J. B. Waring, Art Treasures of the United Kingdom: Consisting of Examples Selected from the Manchester Treasures Exhibition, 1857 (London, 1858), p. 24, pl. IV (engravings).
Catalogue of the Special Exhibition of Works of Art of the Mediaeval, Renaissance, and more recent periods on loan at the South Kensington Museum, June 1862..., exhibition catalogue (London, 1862), no. 220.
R. Koechlin, Les Ivoires gothiques français (Paris, 1924), I, pp. 483, 485, 488, 501; II, no. 1287.
A. McLaren Young, 'A French Medieval Ivory Casket at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts', in The Connoisseur, CXX (1947), pp. 16-21.
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 (pp. 114- 115, 125- 126, 129, 131- 133, 138- 139).
W. D. Wixom, 'Eleven Additions to the Medieval Collection', in Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art (1979), pp. 86-151.
P. Spencer-Longhurst, The Barber Institute of Fine Arts: Handbook (Birmingham, 1993), p. 126.
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. 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.

All images on this website are made available exclusively for scholarly and educational purposes and may not be used commercially.