Inv. A.1902.215.1
Register 1: Temptation of Judas. Christ washing the feet of the apostles. Angel holding crowns (?) and musician angel (psaltery) in the spandrels; angels holding scrolls in the spandrels.
Register 2: Flight into Egypt; swaddled Christ; peasant sowing (referring to the Miracle of the Cornfield). Presentation in the Temple; maid holding a basket of doves brought as offerings; Christ standing on the altar between the Virgin and Simeon. Angels playing musical instruments (triangle; unidentified musical instrument; double flute; pan flute).
Twisted columns; pierced trefoils; medallions enclosing quatrefoils; tracery.
Labarte 1847: Italian, 14th century.
Koechlin 1924: France, early 15th century.
Leeuwenberg 1969: France (?), last quarter of the 18th century to 1st half of the 19th century.
Williamson and Davies 2014: Northern French or Northern Italian (Milan?), late 14th-early 15th century or early 19th century.
Attribution
Master of the Agrafe Forgeries (Leeuwenberg 1969)
Object Condition
The figure of the Virgin of the Flight into Egypt scene has broken off and been glued back into place, with later pieces of ivory to fill the gaps.
Comments
This panel belongs to the same ensemble as three other ones in Edinburgh (Inv. A.1902.215.2-4), some now at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (366-1871), an openwork panel of the Nativity formerly in the Trivulzio collection in Milan (see Koechlin 1924), and an openwork panel in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (32.100.207). See related objects.
Provenance
Collection of Debruge Duménil (in 1847). Collection of George Field: his sale, Christie's, 12 June 1893, lot 168. Collection of Sir Thomas Gibson-Carmichael: his sale, Christie's, 4 may 1902, lot 12; acquired by the museum at this sale.
Bibliography
J. Labarte, Description des objets d'art qui composent la collection Debruge-Duménil (Paris, 1847), no. 155.
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..., revised edition, exhibition catalogue (London, 1863), no. 197.
Catalogue of Bronzes and Ivories, exhibition catalogue, London, Burlington Fine Arts Club, 1879, no. 84.
R. Koechlin, Les Ivoires gothiques français (Paris, 1924), I, pp. 322, 326, 338; II, no. 858; III, pl. CLIV.
I. L. Finlay, Medieval Art at the Royal Scottish Museum, in Apollo LVII, no. 335 (January 1953), p. 26, fig. V.
J. Leeuwenberg, 'Early Nineteenth-Century Gothic Ivories', in Aachener Kunstblätter, 39 (1969), pp. 111-148 (pp. 124-126).
C. T. Little, ‘The Art of Gothic Ivories: Studies at the Crossroads,’ in The Sculpture Journal 23.1 (2014), p. 23.
P. Williamson and G. Davies, Medieval Ivory Carvings 1200-1550 (London, 2014), in relation to no. 171.
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