Part 1: Two figures pushing a child towards a tower (possibly Thisbe locked in her room by her parents?).
Part 2: Pyramus observes Thisbe, locked in a tower.
Part 3: Thisbe and the lion; Thisbe finds refuge from the lion in a tree; lion with a piece of Thisbe's veil in its mouth.
Part 4 (no image): Death of Pyramus and Thisbe; Thisbe discovers the dying Pyramus; Thisbe kills herself with Pyramus' sword.
Westwood 1876: France, 14th century.
Koechlin 1924: France, 1st half of the 14th century.
Attribution
Unknown
Comments
Each panel is made of two pieces. They probably originally formed the end panels of a casket (see Koechlin 1924). A cast was made of these pieces in the 19th century and the photographs on this page are photographs of this cast (Courtauld Institute of Art, Witt and Conway Library, no. 290a-b).
Provenance
Collection of Reverend W. Sneyd, Keele Hall, Staffordshire (in 1876). Stroganoff collection, Rome (before 1924).Possibly Sotheby's, New York, 3 December 1982, lot 71 (two figures pushing a child towards a tower and death of Pyramus and Thisbe).
Bibliography
J. O. Westwood, Fictile Ivories in the South Kensington Museum (London, 1876), no. 689-691 ('55.44).
R. Koechlin, Les Ivoires gothiques français (Paris, 1924), I, p. 503; II, no. 1299.
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