Gothic Ivories Project | Diptych, 2 registers (Front)

Height: 109mm
Width: 67mm (closed), 134mm (open)
Depth: 10mm (bottom), 8mm (top)
Weight: 154g

Wing, left
Register 1: Christ holding the soul of the Virgin; two standing angels in prayer; two angels holding navettes and swinging censers.
Register 2: Death of the Virgin (Dormition); shrouded body of the Virgin.
Wing, right
Register 1: Coronation of the Virgin; two standing angels, possibly holding candlesticks (missing); sun and moon.
Register 2: Assumption; Virgin in a mandorla borne to Heaven by angels (bodily Assumption).

Koechlin 1924: France, beginning of the 2nd third of the 14th century.
Lowden 2008: France (Paris), 14th century, c. 1300-1325.
Museum's opinion 2008: France (Paris), 14th century, c. 1300-c. 1325.

Attribution
Unknown

Hinges
Two original ring hinges.

Polychromy - Gilding
Extensive gilding: especially on hair, beards and hems, original gilded decoration on the background with rosettes of six round petals around a central circle (combined with later three-dot patterns). Some polychromy: red on lips and cheeks, also some yellow and blue. Most of the gilding and polychromy is the product of restoration.

Reverse
Label glued on the outside reading 'No. 209. Diptyque en ivoire', perhaps referring to the Heugel collection. Flat and smooth.

Object Condition
Missing: lower part of the frame of the right wing has been broken by the hinge and a piece of ivory replaced.

Comments
Close to a diptych in the Louvre (see Gaborit-Chopin, 2003, no. 110).

Provenance
Heugel collection, Paris (in 1924; possibly no. 209). Thomson collection, Toronto: acquired from Daniel Katz, London, 2 February 1988; since 2008, The Thomson Collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO).

Bibliography
R. Koechlin, Les Ivoires gothiques français (Paris, 1924), I, p. 140; II, no. 214; III, pl. LIII.
D. Gaborit-Chopin, Ivoires médiévaux, Ve-XVe siècle (Paris: Musée du Louvre, 2003), p. 318, fig. 110a.
J. Cherry, J. Lowden, Medieval Ivories and Works of Art: The Thomson Collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto, 2008), cat. 30.

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