Attribution
Unknown

Hinges
Two missing hinges.

Polychromy - Gilding
Traces of polychromy (borders).

Reverse
Recessed for wax.

Object Condition
Pierced hole in the upper part of each tablet. Traces of hinges.

Comments
Forming a pair with Detroit Institute of Arts, 42.136. Hinges once held the tablets together as a diptych (holes along the right edge of 42.136 and the left edge of 42.137.

Provenance
Bought by Robert H. Tannahill from Goldschmidt Galleries, Inc., New York, in January 1929; given by him to the Institute in 1942.

Bibliography
F. W. Robinson, 'Notes on a French Gothic Writing Tablet', in Bulletin of the Detroit Institute of Arts, 22, no. 8 (May 1943), pp. 84-87, p. 85 (with ill.).
Images of Love and Death in Renaissance and Late Medieval Art, exhibition catalogue, ed. by W. R. Levin, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan, November 1975-January 1976, no. 74, pl. IV.
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. 92.
V. A. Kolve, 'Looking at the Sun in Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde', in Chaucer and the Challenges of Medievalism: Studies in Honor of H. A. Kelly, ed. by D. Minkova and T. Tinkle (Frankfurt am Main, 2003), pp. 37-38, p. 37 (ill.).
V.A. Kolve, Telling Images: Chaucer and the Imagery of Narrative II (Stanford, 2009), pp. 5-6, p. 6, fig. I.1.