Gothic Ivories Project | Complete set of writing tablets, 2 outer tablets, 2 registers, with quatrefoils and 4 inner tablets (tablettes à écrire) (Engraving)

Complete set of writing tablets, 2 outer tablets, 2 registers, with quatrefoils and 4 inner tablets (tablettes à écrire) (Engraving)

Complete set of writing tablets, 2 outer tablets, 2 registers, with quatrefoils and 4 inner tablets (tablettes à écrire) (Engraving)

Links

Subject
Secular. Romance.

Unknown location

S/n

Ivory

Tablet 1
Register 1: Virgil ridiculed in the basket, hanging from the battlements; revenge of Virgil: men lighting candles at the princess's behind.
Register 2: Alexander approaching Phyllis at the loom; Aristotle courting Phyllis.
Tablet 2
Register 1: Aristotle teaching Alexander; Aristotle ridden by Phyllis, observed by Alexander; figures observing from the battlements.
Register 2: unidentified scene; lady walking away from a man (?) seated in a building.

Montfaucon 1722: no date given.

Attribution
Unknown

Reverse
Some tablets recessed to receive the wax, with a raised border. Others (or only one) have their reverse divided into 5 compartments, the central one being circular. Others (or only one) have their reverse divided into 2 compartments by a vertical raised band.

Provenance
Collection of Dom Bernard de Montfaucon (b. 1655, d. 1741), Benedictine monk from the abbey of St. Maur (in 1722).

Bibliography
B. de Montfaucon, L'Antiquité expliquée et représentée en figures (Paris, 1722), III, pt. 2, pp. 356-357, pl. CXCIV.

Image

Out of copyright. From B. de Montfaucon, L'Antiquité expliquée et représentée en figures (Paris, 1722), III, pt. 2.

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