Diptych with Scenes from the Passion

This diptych is composed of two ivory panels joined with two metal hinges. The exteriors are smooth, with the vertical orientation of the grain clearly visible. The metal hook on the outer edge of the right panel is one of two that originally locked into the two matching nails on the other panel’s edge. When engaged, these metal elements allowed the diptych to firmly lock. The interior of the diptych is covered in high-relief carvings in two registers that depict major events leading up to the Resurrection of Jesus. Each band of figural images stands beneath an arcade of crocketed arches that terminate in pendants or colonettes. The narrative begins in the upper left with Christ’s entry into Jerusalem, followed by the Last Supper. Crossing to the other panel, it continues with Jesus washing the feet of the apostles and his arrest by soldiers in the Garden of Gethsemane. The narrative then moves to the bottom register, reading from left to right through the Flagellation, the Crucifixion, the Deposition, and the Resurrection.

The carving preserves a heavy layer of paint, with backgrounds and draperies picked out in red, blue, and green. Traces of brown survive on the columns and the recesses of the figures’ hair, with gold in the folds of the garments of Jesus. On Mary’s veil in the Crucifixion and Deposition, a lower, pink pigment emerges from an overlying layer of blue in damaged areas. The practice of using pink gesso (also known as bole or terra rosa) as a painting primer was formerly widespread, suggesting that the blue and pink layers are part of the same painting campaign. The paint likely dates to the nineteenth century, when a taste for Gothic art and the widespread promotion of ancient and medieval polychrome sculpture encouraged the "touching up" of historical artworks. In the current diptych, this touching up appears to have affected most of the carved surface.

In its overarching approach, there is much in the modern painting that recalls medieval aesthetics. The dark, saturated blue, red, and green, with hints of brown reflects color palettes typical of fourteenth-century ivory sculptures from France. Inventories such as that made in 1380 for Charles V of France refer to diptychs as having grounds painted (in their words, enameled) blue. The painter has allowed the unpainted ivory to serve as white skin tone, which was a typical practice of French gothic ivory carvers. Art historian, Madeline Caviness has associated it with a late medieval practice that of using color and skin pigmentation as a visual shorthand for a figure’s moral status. This approach perhaps suggests that remnants of original polychromy may have guided the modern painter’s color choice. That said, some of the details appear anachronistic and suggest the painter may have been drawing ideas from other media. The use of brown pigment on the hair and architectural details, is one such instance, as fourteenth-century artists would have preferred to pick out these details in gold. Similarly odd for a Gothic ivory is the blotchy paint job on the tomb from which Jesus arises in the Resurrection. The mottled blue and yellow and bare ivory evoke colored granite, a material admired as a decorative stone and whose visual effects artists replicated in enamels, frescoes, and manuscript paintings. Is it possible that the modern painter was inspired by these works when attempting to resurrect the coloristic character of a medieval ivory?

Further Reading:

Marian Bleeke, "Ivory and Whiteness," Different Visions 6 (2020).

Danielle Gaborit-Chopin, "The Polychrome Decoration of Gothic Ivories," in Images in Ivory: Precious Objects of the Gothic Age, pp. 47-61.

Madeline Caviness, "From the Self-Invention of the Whiteman in the Thirteenth Century to The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly," in Different Visions: A Journal of New Perspectives on Medieval Art 1 (2008), pp. 1-33.

Marco Collareta, "From Color to Black and White, and Back Again: The Middle Ages and Early Modern Times," in The Color of Life: Polychromy in Sculpture from Antiquity to the Present, ed. Roberta Panzanelli (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2008), pp. 62-78.


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)

Royal Ontario Museum. "Seven Centuries of English Domestic Silver," January 22–March 8, 1956.

Catalogue officiel illustré de l'exposition retrospective de l'art français des origines à 1800. Exposition universelle de 1900. Paris: Lemercier & Cie., 1900. no. 126, 128, or 130 (?), p. 265.

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. 74, p. 33, pl. LV.

Koechlin, Raymond. Les Ivoires Gothiques Français: Volume I, Text. Paris: Editions Auguste Picard, 1924. no. 372, pp.187, 188, 294.

Koechlin, Raymond. Les Ivoires Gothiques Français: Volume II, Catalogue. Paris: Editions Auguste Picard, 1924. no. 372, p. 158.

Koechlin, Raymond. Les Ivoires Gothiques Français: Volume III, Plates. Paris: Editions Auguste Picard, 1924. no. 372, pl. LXXXIII.

The Life of Christ: A Loan Exhibition of Works of Art Illustrating Episodes in the Life of Christ. Hartford, CT: Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, 1948. no. 201, p. 34.

Williamson, Paul, and Glyn Davies. Medieval Ivory Carvings, 1200–1550. Vol. 1. London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 2014. p. 301.