Inv. A.1902.215.2
Register 1: Agony in the Garden (Christ at Gethsemane); apostles asleep; God the Father; blessing gesture; trees. Betrayal (Taking of Christ; Kiss of Judas); Christ restores Malchus' ear, cut by saint Peter; soldiers in armour; lantern; spears.Angels holding scrolls in the spandrels; musician angels in the spandrels (drum; string instruments).
Register 2: Christ among the doctors; Virgin holding a book; Christ wearing a papal tiara; scroll. Baptism of Christ by saint John the Baptist; angel holding Christ's tunic; camel hide.
Musician angels in the spandrels (flute; drum; string instruments).
Twisted columns; pierced trefoils; medallions enclosing quatrefoils; tracery.
Labarte 1847: Italian, 14th century.
Koechlin 1924: France, early 15th century.
Leeuwenberg 1969: France (?), last quarter of the 18th century to 1st half of the 19th century.
Williamson and Davies 2014: Northern French or Northern Italian (Milan?), late 14th-early 15th century or early 19th century.
Attribution
Master of the Agrafe Forgeries (Leeuwenberg 1969)
Reverse
Flat; scoring along the sides for glue.
Object Condition
Missing: two figures at the top right of the scene of Christ among the doctors are a later replacement (more visible from the back).
Comments
This panel belongs to the same ensemble as three other ones in Edinburgh (Inv. A.1902.215.1 and 3-4), some now at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (366-1871), an openwork panel of the Nativity formerly in the Trivulzio collection in Milan (see Koechlin 1924), and an openwork panel in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (32.100.207).
Provenance
Collection of Debruge Duménil (in 1847). Collection of George Field: his sale, Christie's, 12 June 1893, lot 168. Collection of Sir Thomas Gibson-Carmichael: his sale, Christie's, 4 may 1902, lot 12; acquired by the museum at this sale.
Bibliography
J. Labarte, Description des objets d'art qui composent la collection Debruge-Duménil (Paris, 1847), no. 155.
Catalogue of the Special Exhibition of Works of Art of the Mediaeval, Renaissance, and more recent periods on loan at the South Kensington Museum, June 1862..., revised edition, exhibition catalogue (London, 1863), no. 197.
Catalogue of Bronzes and Ivories, exhibition catalogue, London, Burlington Fine Arts Club, 1879, no. 84.
R. Koechlin, Les Ivoires gothiques français (Paris, 1924), I, pp. 322, 326, 338; II, no. 858; III, pl. CLIV.
J. Leeuwenberg, 'Early Nineteenth-Century Gothic Ivories', in Aachener Kunstblätter, 39 (1969), pp. 111-148 (pp. 124-126).
P. Williamson and G. Davies, Medieval Ivory Carvings 1200-1550 (London, 2014), in relation to no. 171.
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