Gothic Ivories Project | Gabled polyptych (tabernacle; colonnettes; frise d'arcatures) (Front)

Wings, left
Register 1: Annunciation; Visitation.
Register 2: Adoring Magi (part of an Adoration of the Magi scene).
Centre panel
Standing Virgin and Child (Vierge glorieuse); angel crowning the Virgin; two standing angels holding candlesticks.
Wings, right
Register 1: Nativity with Joseph holding Christ; maid holding a candlestick.
Register 2: Presentation in the Temple; Joseph holding a basket of doves brought as offerings.
Pinnacles.

Molinier 1890: France, 14th century.
Bode 1897: France, early 14th century.
Koechlin 1912: France, end of 13th century or early 14th century.
Koechlin 1924: France, end of 13th century or early 14th century.
Randall 1993: French (Paris), 1280-1290.

Attribution
Unknown

Hinges
Two sets of two hinges on either side.

Polychromy - Gilding
Traces of polychromy and gilding: gold (hair, beards, decoration along the hems, crown, base with foliated decoration, etc.), green (architectural details, painted trefoils in the spandrels, clothes), red (books, flower, etc.).

Reverse
Flat and smooth. Pinnacles carved in the round.

Provenance
Frédéric Spitzer collection, Paris: his sale, Chevallier and Mannheim, Paris, 17 April 1893, lot 119. Collection of Oscar Hainauer (b. 1840s?, d. 1894), Berlin (Inv. Eb. 9). Emile Baboin collection, Lyon. Bought by the Museum from Raphael Stora, New York, in 1950, thanks to the Edward Drummond Libbey Endowment.

Bibliography
La Collection Spitzer (Paris, 1890), I, no. 84 (E. Molinier).
W. Bode, Die Sammlung Oscar Hainauer (Berlin, 1897), no. 138.
R. Koechlin, 'Quelques ateliers d'ivoiriers français aux XIII et XIVe siècles. II. L'atelier des tabernacles de la Vierge', in Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 34 (1905), pp. 453-471 (p. 467).
R. Koechlin, Ivoires gothiques: Collection Emile Baboin (Lyon, 1912), no. 21.
R. Koechlin, Les Ivoires gothiques français (Paris, 1924), I, p. 129, 133, II, no. 165; III, pl. XLI.
'Medieval Art at Toledo: A Selection', in Apollo 86, no. 70 (1967), p. 240.
C. Little, 'Ivoires et art gothique', in Revue de l'art, 46 (1979), pp. 58-67 (p. 61).
R. H. Randall, The Golden Age of Ivory: Gothic Ivory Carvings in North American Collections (New York, 1993), no. 32.
Toledo Treasures (Toledo, 1995), p. 58.
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, no. 17, pp. 144-146.
J. A. McMaster, The Enduring Legacy: a Pictorial History of the Toledo Museum of Art (Warren, OH, 2001), p. 33 (ill.).
R. H. Putney, Medieval Art, Medieval People: The Cloister Gallery of the Toledo Museum of Art (Toledo, 2002), title page and p. 25, fig. 16.
P. Williamson and G. Davies, Medieval Ivory Carvings 1200-1550 (London, 2014), pp. 151-153, in relation to no. 46.

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