Gothic Ivories Project | Wing, right (part of a diptych), 2 registers, 3 arches across (frise d'arcatures; colonnettes) (Front)

Register 1: Nativity with Annunciation to the Shepherds; swaddled Christ; musician shepherd playing the bagpipes; sheep.
Register 2: Adoration of the Magi; angel crowning the Virgin; hanging curtain. Herod ordering the Massacre of the Innocents; soldiers in armour.
Band of pierced quatrefoils. Band of pierced arches. Pinnacles.

Koechlin 1924: France, 1st third of 14th century.
Gaborit-Chopin 1978: Paris, 2nd quarter of the 14th century.
KIK/IRPA database [accessed 2009]: France, last third of the 14th century.
Chiesi 2011: France, c. 1320-1340.

Attribution
Unknown

Hinges
Traces of three missing hinges on the left side.

Polychromy - Gilding
Traces of gilding and polychromy (revived): gold (helmets; crowns; hair; beards), red (architectural details; clothes; rosettes), blue (clothes), green (clothes).

Reverse
Flat and smooth. Corners and centrepiece with carved decoration.

Object Condition
Missing: right column of the lower register (replaced)

Comments
The left wing of this diptych is also in the Museo Nazionale del Bargello (Inv. 98 C).

Provenance
Collection of Francis Douce (b. 1757, d. 1834); collection of Sir Samuel Rush Meyrick (b. 1783, d. 1848), by bequest, 1834; collection of Major-General Augustus Meyrick, by bequest (until c. 1872). Carrand collection: bequeathed by Louis Carrand (d. 1888) to the Museo del Bargello in 1888.

Bibliography
S. R. Meyrick, 'The Doucean Museum', in Gentlemen's Magazine (April 1836).
E. Molinier, Histoire générale des Arts appliqués à l'Industrie (Paris, 1896), I: Les Ivoires, pl. XX.
I. B. Supino, Catalogo del Regio Museo Nazionale di Firenze (Rome, 1898), pp. 226-227, no. 97-98.
E. Gerspach, 'La Collection Carrand au musée national de Florence', in Les Arts 32 (August 1904), p. 32, no. 32.
R. Koechlin, 'Les Diptyques à décor de roses', in Gazette des Beaux-Arts (1918), pp. 240-241.
R. Koechlin, Les Ivoires gothiques français (Paris, 1924), I, p. 158; II, no. 268; III, pl. LXX.
L. Vitali, Avori gotici francesi (Milan, 1976), p. 23, no. 9.
D. Gaborit-Chopin, Ivoires du Moyen Age (Freiburg, 1978), no. and fig. 234 (mistakenly designated as Inv. 102 and Inv. 103).
KIK/IRPA database: http://www.kikirpa.be/www2/wwwopac/en/object.html [accessed October 2009].
B. Chiesi, Catalogo degli avori gotici del Museo Nazionale del Bargello (unpublished PhD thesis - Università degli Studi di Firenze, 2011), pp. 164-178.

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