Top Panel of a Box

A joust occupies the face of this ivory panel, which served as the top of a rectangular box similar to another in The Met’s collection (acc. no. 17.190.173a, b; 1988.16). A series of silver or copper alloy bars attached the panel to the body of the box. The central of these bars formed the tongue of the box’s lock. Rivets affixed the bars to the face of the panel itself, hence the holes and the raised vertical lines that interrupt the panel’s carving. The smooth, raised, and perforated circles behind the heads of the jousting knights served as platforms for the box’s handle. The hatched outer edge of the panel suggests that it was rimmed with metal, and the panel’s chamfered lower side allowed it to fit snuggly into the box’s sides.

Modern scholars have often begun their interpretations of ivory Gothic boxes with the presupposition that they were owned by women and that their imagery was largely targeted at a female audience. This assumption derives from another: that these boxes served as containers for small articles like jewelry and hygienic items. This chain of assumptions squares poorly with documentary evidence and cultural norms of fourteenth-century France. In the early fourteenth century, men wore their hair long and copious jewelry, and in the end of the century French aristocrats like King Charles V of France and Jean, Duke de Berry were compulsive collectors of cameos, gemstones, and jewelry. That aside, documentary sources record such boxes in the personal collections of men, proving that the presumed feminine audience of these boxes is an illusion of modern gendered stereotyping. The iconography of these boxes could speak to all gendered audiences, as demonstrated by the current box cover centered on a scene of jousting. Two helmeted knights on caparisoned horses charge with blunted lances. The audience looks on from the battlements of a castle and on ground level, their gestures raised to suggest giddy alarm or pointed to suggest the direction of animated speech. Trumpeters perched in trees on either side of the jousters lend a boisterous, noisy atmosphere to the drama of the games. Centering as it does the action in the realm of martial valor, the carving on this box foregrounds military prowess and its attendant chivalric ideology. These themes clearly resonate with an aristocratic man whose social position relied heavily on his status as a professional warrior. This was true even for the kings of France, who alternated between outlawing jousts and participating in their action. Simultaneously, women both attended and participated in jousts, as suggested by the female audience members on the battlements and on either side of the action. This image of daily life thus suggests the mutability of gender in a world where people of all genders participated in the ideology of chivalry.

Further Reading:

Stephen H. Hardy, "The Medieval Tournament: A Functional Sport of the Upper Class," Journal of Sport History, Vol. 1, No. 2 (1974), pp. 91-105.

Paul Williamson and Glyn Davies, Medieval Ivory Carvings, 1200-1550, Part II (London: V&A Publishing, 2014), pp. 653-706.


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

Baron Albert Oppenheim, Cologne(sold 1906); J. Pierpont Morgan (American), London and New York (1906–1917)

The Katonah Gallery. "Medieval Images: a glimpse into the symbolism and reality of the Middle ages," May 12–May 21, 1978.

Reno. Sierra Nevada Museum of Art. "Culture of the Middle Ages: a festival of the medieval arts," December 8–31, 1978.

Aspen Center for the Visual Arts. "Medieval Images," November 25, 1979–January 27, 1980.

Molinier, Emile. Collection du Baron Albert Oppenheim: Tableaux et objets d'art, catalogue précédé d'une introduction. Paris: Librairie Centrale des Beaux-Arts, 1904. no. 72, p. 32.

Loomis, Roger Sherman. "A Medieval Ivory Casket." Art in America 5, no. 1 (December 1916). pp. 19–20, fig. 1.

Koechlin, Raymond. Les Ivoires Gothiques Français: Volume I, Text. Paris: Editions Auguste Picard, 1924. no. 1295, p. 488.

Koechlin, Raymond. Les Ivoires Gothiques Français: Volume II, Catalogue. Paris: Editions Auguste Picard, 1924. no. 1295, p. 458.

Marle, Raimond van. Iconographie de l'art profane au Moyen-Age et à la Renaissance, et la décoration des demeures: Volume 1, La vie quotidienne. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1931. p. 144, ill.

Ross, David J. A. "Allegory and Romance on a Mediaeval French Marriage Casket." Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 11 (1948). pp. 137, 138, (as K. 1295).

Calkins, Robert G. A Medieval Treasury: An Exhibition of Medieval Art from the Third to the Sixteenth Century. Ithaca, N.Y.: Andrew Dickson White Museum of Art, 1968. no. 80, pp. 7, 9, 157.

Gómez-Moreno, Carmen, ed. Medieval Images: A Glimpse into the Symbolism and Reality of the Middle Ages. Katonah: Katonah Museum of Art, 1978. no. 21, pp. 8, 19.

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. 22.

Williamson, Paul, and Glyn Davies. Medieval Ivory Carvings, 1200–1550. Vol. 2. London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 2014. p. 657.