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Artwork Details
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Title:Virgin and Child
Date:mid-14th century
Culture:French
Medium:Elephant ivory
Dimensions:Overall: 7 1/8 x 2 3/4 x 13/16 in. (18.1 x 7 x 2 cm)
Classification:Ivories-Elephant
Credit Line:Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1917
Object Number:17.190.210
This ivory carving presents the standing figure of Mary holding the young Jesus on her left hip. She is crowned and veiled and wears a form-fitting gown or kirtle cinched with a belt at the waist. The gown flows in wide, vertical folds, and her mantle cascades from her right hand in diagonal pleats. Firmly holding the baby with her right hand, she turns to the right, meeting the gaze of the young Jesus, who reaches forward and lays a hand on her sternum. Jesus is barefoot and dressed in a long, unbelted tunic.
The facial types of Mary and Jesus, especially their narrow eyes, puffy eyelids, and incised eyelid crease, resemble the faces on a diptych and a folding shrine in The Met’s collection (acc. nos. 17.190.288 and 30.95.115) and suggest a French origin in the middle of the fourteenth century. The figures are carved into a wedge-shaped slab of ivory that tapers toward the base and stands by means of a dowel hole in the base. The crust-covered abrasion on the panel’s back is a remnant of its former attachment to a backing. These features suggest that carving was an element in a larger composition that may have resembled contemporary folding shrines or "tabernacle polyptychs" made of ivory (see for instance Met acc. no. 17.190.174).
The carving has been heavily altered. In addition to the loss of its original mounting system, Mary is missing her feet, the upper elements of her crown, parts of her veil, and her left arm. The nose of Jesus is abraded, his back has suffered loss, and the back of his head is missing, revealing a dowel hole. A series of horizontal gashes on the upper part of the back may have resulted from an attempt to pry the carving off its former backing with a blade. The carving’s surface has been nicked in places and developed craquelure from dehydration. It also preserves traces of gilding and pigment in the folds of the mantle.
Unusually for French ivory carving of the fourteenth century, this panel incorporates cementum, the hard layer of calcified material that forms the outer "bark" of an elephant’s tusk. It is visible on the back of the panel, where it forms a rough, fissured, brown surface. Viewing the carving from the side reveals the layers of bark, the "transition ring," the distinct layer of dense, white, unmarked material beneath the cementum, and the textured dentine that makes up the bulk of the tusk. Viewing the carving from the side also reveals that the back of the panel is slightly concave, suggesting that this panel was cut from the inner curve of the tusk. These outer layers are hard and challenging to carve. As such, fourteenth-century French ivory carvers normally stripped them off to prepare the ivory for carving. Why it was included in this instance is unclear. As Sarah Guérin notes, carvers occasionally left the cementum on ivory diptychs in order to create larger panels (see Guérin 2015, p. 45). It is therefore possible that the artist sought to make the most of a cast-off fragment of ivory.
Further Reading:
Elizabeth Sears, "Ivory and Ivory Workshops in Medieval Paris," in Images in Ivory: Precious Objects of the Gothic Age, ed. Peter Barnet (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997): pp. 18-37.
Sarah Guérin, "Introduction to Gothic Ivories," in Gothic Ivories: Calouste Gulbenkian Collection (London: Scala Arts & Heritage Publishers Ltd., 2015): pp. 37-55.
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); J. Pierpont Morgan (American), London and New York (until 1917)
Yellowstone Art Center. "A Christmas Exhibition: from the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Cloisters," December 1–31, 1978.
Pératé, André. Collections Georges Hoentschel: Ivoires, orfèvrerie religieuse, pierres. Vol. 2. Paris: Librairie Centrale des Beaux-Arts, 1911. no. 27, fig. XXIII.
Boardman, Phillip C., Marcia Cohn Growdon, and Francis X. Hartigan, ed. Culture of the Middle Ages: A Festival of the Medieval Arts. . Reno, Nev.: Sierra Nevada Museum of Art, 1978. no. 23.
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