Register 1: soldiers (part of the Arrest of Christ); Death of Judas (Judas hanging); Pilate washing his hands.
Register 2: Crucifixion with the Virgin and saint John the Evangelist; Deposition with the Virgin holding Christ's hand; man with pincers removing the nail from Christ's feet.
Register 3: Noli me Tangere (Christ appearing to saint Mary Magdalene) conflated with Harrowing of Hell; mouth of Hell.
Border of dentils.
Koechlin 1924: France, end of the 1st half of the 14th century (?).
Egbert 1929: North Italy, c. 1325.
Randall 1993: North Italy, 1st quarter of the 14th century.
Attribution
Unknown
Hinges
Two missing hinges.
Polychromy - Gilding
Extensive traces of polychromy: blue (cross and nail puller in the Deposition scene), red (Virgin's robe in the Crucifixion scene).
Comments
The right wing is 42.138 also at the Detroit Institute of Arts.
Provenance
Said to have come from the cathedral treasury of Laon. Manzi collection, Paris: sold, at the Manzi-Joyant sale, Paris, 15-16 December 1919, lot 45. Jacques Seligmann and Fils, Paris. Collection of Maurice Sulzbach, Paris (by 1924). Arnold Seligmann, Rey and Co., New York. Bought by Robert H. Tannahill, 23 February 1926; given by him to the Institute in 1942.
Bibliography
A. Alexandre, 'La Collection Manzi', in Les Arts (1919), no. 177, p. 21.
R. Koechlin, Les Ivoires gothiques français (Paris, 1924), II, no. 265bis.
The Seventh Loan Exhibition of French Gothic Art of the Thirteenth to Fifteenth Century, exhibition catalogue, Detroit, Detroit Institute of Arts, 1928, no. 54.
D. D. Egbert, 'North Italian Gothic Ivories in the Museo Cristiano of the Vatican Library', in Art Studies, 7 (1929), pp. 168-207 [p. 189, fig. 40].
The Waning of the Middle Ages, exhibition catalogue, Pomona College, Montgomery Art Center, Claremont, CA, 4 April- 2 May 1965, no. 27.
Le Trésor de Saint-Denis, exhibition catalogue, Paris, Musée du Louvre, 1991, p. 242, fig. 1.
R. H. Randall, The Golden Age of Ivory: Gothic Ivory Carvings in North American Collections (New York, 1993), no. 209.
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