Diptych with Annunciation, Visitation, Nativity, Crucifixion, and Coronation of the Virgin

This diptych is composed of two rectangular ivory panels. Two hinges ornamented with niello arabesques join the panels, allowing the diptych to open and close like a book. Like contemporary books, a pair of clasps on the outer side edges of the panels allows the diptych to be locked closed when not in use. The backs of the panels are smooth, revealing the vertical orientation of the ivory grain.

The fronts of the panels are divided into two registers separated by a plain band of raised ivory, with each register crowned with three gothic arches sheltering figural scenes. The lancet arches are cusped and crocketed, with chip-carved tracery in the spandrels. The figural carvings represent narratives from the lives of the Virgin Mary and Christ and progress across the two panels from left to right and from bottom to top register.

The lower register of the left panel includes two scenes, the Annunciation and the Visitation. On the left, the archangel Gabriel announces to Mary that she will miraculously conceive the son of God, and on the right, Mary greets her cousin Elizabeth who is also miraculously pregnant. The lower register of the right panel presents the Nativity. Mary rests after giving birth to Jesus, who lies in an altar-like crib and holds one of his mother’s hands while an ox and a donkey kneel before him. At the foot of the bed Mary’s aged husband Joseph watches over his wife with a cane in one hand and the other raised in amazement. Behind him, a gloved and hooded shepherd receives word of the birth of the Messiah from an angel who descends from heaven through a cusped arch. In the middle arch, another shepherd with a bagpipe looks onto the scene from a grassy hillside, which the carver has articulated as an organic swell in the ivory background.

The upper register of the left panel presents the Crucifixion. On the left, Mary falls into the arms of her female companions, while Longinus pierces Christ with his sword. He raises his left hand to his eye, recalling the apocryphal legend that Christ’s spilled blood miraculously healed the soldier’s blindness. On the right, Stephaton soaks a sponge with diluted vinegar (a Roman beverage called posca) to quench Jesus’s thirst. Behind him, Saint John the Evangelist holds his book. Two members of Jerusalem’s religious hierarchy are visible behind John. Turning away from the scene, they study an unfurled scroll. The upper register of the right panel presents the Coronation of the Virgin. Christ and Mary share a heavenly throne flanked by two angels with tapers. Christ raises his right hand to bless the praying Virgin, who receives a crown from an angel descending from above.

The diptych is in generally good condition. The carvings show no areas of loss or damage and there is little visible wear to their features. Traces of paint are visible in the stem of the lily in the Annunciation. Traces of green paint are also visible on the grassy hillside behind the main figures of the Nativity. All the metalware is modern, and a modern piece of ivory has been used to restore the raised frame immediately below the upper hinge on the left panel. The back preserves a historical collection sticker.

Like other objects whose acquisition number begins with the digits "17.190," this ivory came to The Met as a part of J. Pierpont Morgan Jr.’s 1917 donation of European decorative art. This gift radically changed the shape of the Museum’s collections and introduced the American public for the first time to major works of European medieval art, including carvings in ivory. The Met already held a few medieval ivories in 1917, but many proved to be forgeries (see for example acc. nos. 90.22.8, 90.22.9, 11.93.14; 04.25; 11.182.3a–c; 13.46b). By the late nineteenth century, the Louvre, the Musée de Cluny, and the Victoria and Albert Museum had amassed superlative collections of medieval ivory carving, and wealthy individuals such as the Russian expatriate Prince Petr Soltykoff, the dealer and tastemaker Frédéric Spitzer, and the American businessman Henry Walters gathered their own private collections that rivaled major European museums. The current diptych arrived at The Met as a part of a collection gathered by Georges Hoentschel, who was a French designer now chiefly remembered for his ceramic designs in the Art Nouveau style (see for instance acc. nos. 2007.27, 2011.34, 2013.491). He also designed interiors for elite French clients in a variety of historical styles and in 1906 sold J. Pierpont Morgan the large collection of French decorative arts that he had amassed as references in his interior design business. Following this initial sale, he developed a new collection focused on medieval and renaissance decorative arts with the express intent of a future sale to Morgan. This so-called "Second Hoentschel Collection," whose sale was accomplished in 1911, included many French Gothic diptychs, combs, crosiers, and boxes made of ivory. The present diptych made its New York debut with the rest of the Second Hoentschel Collection in the 1914 Morgan Loan Exhibition. After 1917, it formed part of the nucleus of the Department of Decorative Art before moving in 1934 to the newly founded Department of Medieval Art.

Further Reading:

Danielle O. Kisluk-Grosheide, Deborah L. Krohn, and Ulrich Leben, eds. Salvaging the Past: Georges Hoentschel and French Decorative Arts from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1907-2013 (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2013).

Paola Cordera, La fabbrica del Rinascimento: Frédéric Spitzer mercante d’arte e collezionista nell’Europa delle nuove nazioni (Bologna: Bononia University Press, 2014).


Catalogue Entry by Scott Miller, Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial and Research Collections Specialist, Department of Medieval Art and The Cloisters, 2020–2022

Georges Hoentschel (French)(sold 1911); J. Pierpont Morgan (American), London and New York (1911–1913); Estate of J. Pierpont Morgan, New York (1913–1917)

Brooklyn. Brooklyn Museum. "Out of the East," April 3, 1950–June 6, 1950.

Pératé, André. Collections Georges Hoentschel: Ivoires, orfèvrerie religieuse, pierres. Vol. 2. Paris: Librairie Centrale des Beaux-Arts, 1911. no. 41, fig. XXXIV.

Koechlin, Raymond. Les Ivoires Gothiques Français: Volume I, Text. Paris: Editions Auguste Picard, 1924. no. 324, p. 174.

Koechlin, Raymond. Les Ivoires Gothiques Français: Volume II, Catalogue. Paris: Editions Auguste Picard, 1924. no. 324, p. 139.

Gaborit-Chopin, Danielle. Ivoires Médiévaux, Ve-XVe siècle. Paris: Musée du Louvre, 2003. p. 396.