Writing Tablet with Crucifixion and the Adoration of the Magi

This rectangular ivory panel is a fragment of a writing tablet. On the reverse, raised lines divide the panel into five recessed fields with smooth backgrounds, a pattern frequently encountered in contemporary writing tablets (see for example Victoria & Albert inv. nos. A.26-1958; A.27-1940 A.22-1940). The fields are covered in scratch marks and brown residue and preserve inventory numbers, colored stains, and a sticker from the Paris custom’s depot. Three pieces of parchment were once glued into the vertical notches on the left edge of the reverse, demonstrating that the panel served as the writing tablet’s back cover. On the panel’s front, a horizontal, raised band divides the carved surface into two registers. A slightly diagonal groove bisects this band and cuts into the thickness of the panel at the edges. Three cusped and crocketed arches crown the top of each register, with the spandrels between the arches decorated with trefoils. The figural carving in the lower register represents the Adoration of the Three Magi. The eldest Magi removes his crown and kneels before the infant Jesus, who stands on the lap of the seated and crowned Mary to receive his gift. The other two Magi stand behind the eldest and hold their gifts with their hands covered in their mantels. The Magus to the left holds his hand up in a gesture of surprise, while the one in the center points to the star above Mary’s head. In the register above, Jesus hangs upon the cross amid a crowd of onlookers. Mary collapses into the arms of her three female relatives on the left. On the right, John the Evangelist looks on, book in hand. Two members of Jerusalem’s temple hierarchy, one of whom bears a scroll, debate the significance of the event. The sun and moon hover over the scene, with the fullness of each orb cut off by the angle of the arches. The panel demonstrates signs of wear. There is significant rounding to the faces along with hairline dehydration cracks, and a general brown patina which becomes darker in the recesses of the carving.

The iconography on this fragment of a writing tablet is a variation of the cycle representing the life and death of Jesus. Both scenes are commonly encountered on contemporary devotional diptychs, as seen on examples in the collection in The Met (acc. no. 17.190.287). When carving individual scenes, fourteenth-century ivory carvers stuck to standardized iconographic and compositional formulas. They demonstrate more liberty in the arrangement and choice of scenes, making the iconography on the now missing front cover difficult to decipher. It may have followed the repertoire seen on a diptych in the collection of The Met (acc. no. 30.95.123), where the Adoration of the Magi and the Crucifixion on the right are paired with the Nativity and the Presentation at the Temple on the left.

This panel is a fragment of a large group of miniaturized booklets representing scenes from the Christian Bible. Some of these, as in an example in the collection of The Met (acc. no. 1982.60.399), may have served as accessories to private devotion. The smooth, indented ivory leaves in other intact ivory booklets, for instance the ones preserved in the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum in Munich (inv. no. MA 2033) and the Victoria & Albert Museum ( inv. no. 804-1891), served as a ground for a flat sheet of colored wax. Users could write text by scratching this surface with a pointed stylus and erase it heating the stylus’s blunt end and dragging it across the surface of the wax. This type of writing surface proved versatile, encouraging the use of wax tablets for drafting texts and correspondence, performing schoolroom exercises, note-taking, sketching, and accounting, and for keeping religious texts and administrative documents for short and long-term use. With its eight leaves preserving the fragmentary texts of a love letter, household accounts, and notes on a legal proceeding, a boxwood example retrieved in 1989 from Swinegate in York demonstrates that these diverse uses could reside side by side in the same diminutive object. The religious imagery adorning the current writing tablet cover could have injected a sense of Christian cosmology into such daily tasks. It may have further allowed the tablet to serve a second function as a portable diptych if opened fully and viewed from behind.

Further Reading:

Michelle Brown, "The Role of the Wax Tablet in Medieval Literacy: a Reconsideration in Light of a Find from York" The British Library Journal Vol. 20, No. 1 (1994). pp. 1-16.

John Lowden and John Cherry, Medieval ivories and Works of Art: The Thomson Collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto: Skylet Publishing, 2008). pp. 78-79.

Paul Williamson and Glynn Davies, Medieval Ivory Carvings 1200-1400 (London: Victoria & Albert Publishing, 2014): pp. 345-38


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

Mr. and Mrs. Maxime Levy Hermanos, Paris and New York (until 1979)

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Mirror of the Medieval World," March 9–June 1, 1999.

Wixom, William D. "Curatorial Reports and Departmental Accessions." Annual Report of the Trustees of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 110 (July 1, 1979–June 30, 1980). p. 42.

Brown, Michelle. "The Role of the Wax Tablet in Medieval Literacy: a Reconsideration in Light of a Find from York." The British Library Journal Vol. 20, No. 1 (Spring 1994). pp. 1-16.

Wixom, William D., ed. Mirror of the Medieval World. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1999. no. 160, p. 136.

Lowden, John. Medieval and Later Ivories in the Courtauld Gallery: Complete Catalogue. London: Courtauld Gallery, 2013. p. 84, fig. 43.