Panel with Virgin and Child and Saints

This openwork ivory panel represents a group of holy figures beneath a complex architectural frame. They may be identified, from left to right, as Saint Michael, the Virgin Mary and the baby Jesus, and Saint Catherine of Alexandria. Significant traces of gilding remain in the architectural frame, the hair, crowns, and the attributes, namely Saint Catherine’s wheel and palm, the book held by Jesus, and Saint Michael’s shield and cruciform spear. The dragon at Saint Michael’s feet retains traces of red paint in addition to gilding. The panel has been glued to a piece of red velvet and backed with paper for support. Aside from two cracks, the carving is in generally good condition, a state owed in part to the extremely shallow relief of the carving and the sculptor’s avoidance of heavy undercutting in the figures and drapery. The left and right edges of the frame appear to have been trimmed down, and the ivory itself is pulpy, suggesting it was taken from near the center of an ivory tusk.

This panel demonstrates the contribution of large-scale sculpture to the stylistic repertoire of ivory carvers in the years after 1400. All three figures don sweeping chasubles that fall in rhythmic, diagonal folds to their left or right. This formula for representing cloth breaks from traditions for rendering cloth received from Parisian ivory carving of the fourteenth century. These earlier carvings normally represent draperies as flowing in thick, vertical pleats or as gathered in the arm like a toga, as may be seen in several examples in the collection (acc. nos. 17.190.288; 17.190.294). The current composition instead owes much to monumental sculptures by the artists Jean de Liège and Andre Beauneveau, the leading artists in the courts of Charles V de France and Jean, Duc de Berry in the fourth quarter of the fourteenth century. Beauneveu’s statues of the Virgin and Child and Saint Catherine in particular both represent diaphanous cloth animated by similarly smooth, rippling pleats, suggesting the carver responsible for the current panel was familiar with his work. The architectural frame demonstrates the impact of two other major sculptors in the years around 1400, namely Jean de Marville and Claus Sluter. Marville and Sluter are perhaps most famous for the alabaster tomb they carved for Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, for the Carthusian monastery of Chartreuse de Champmol outside Dijon. The current architectural frame reproduces these frames with few modifications and even retains the gold-on-white detailing on the leaf-shaped crockets.

Modern scholarship often characterizes ivory carving as an industrial art, lending the impression that it was an inward-looking art form isolated from developments in other sculptural media. The pronounced impact on this plaque of sculptors working on large and medium-scale sculptures demonstrates that carvers actively participated in the major sculptural trends of the later fourteenth century. The great sculptors of this period, Beauneveu, de Liège, Marville, and Sluter, were all from the Low Countries but travelled widely in the Kingdom of France and the Duchy of Burgundy in the course of their careers. The designation Franco-Flemish for the current ivory plaque reflects the impact of these artists over a wide region in Western Europe.

Further Reading:

Leeuwenberg, Jaap. "Early nineteenth-century Gothic Ivoires," Aachener Künstblatter XXXIX (1969), pp. 111-148.

Stephen Fliegel and Sophia Jugie, Art from the Court of Burgundy: The Patronage of Philip the Bold and John the Fearless 1364-1419 (Paris and Cleveland: éditions de la Réunion des Musées nationaux and the Cleveland Museum of Art, 2004).

Susie Nash, No Equal in Any Land: Andre Beauneveu, Artist to the Courts of France and Flanders (London: Paul Holberton Publishing, 2007).

Paul Williamson and Glyn Davies, Medieval Ivory Carvings, 1200-1550, Part I (London: Victoria and Albert Museum Publishing, 2014), pp. 528-531.


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

Achillito Chiesa, Milan (sold 1926); [Chiesa collection sale, American Art Association, New York ( April 16-17, 1926, no. 335)]; [ F. Kleinberger Galleries, New York (in 1926–sold 1926)]; Michael Friedsam, New York (in 1926–d. 1931)

The collection of Sr. Achillito Chiesa of Milan, part III. New York: American Art Association, April 16–17, 1926. no. 335.