Folding Shrine with Virgin and Child

In this folding shrine, a tent-like structure supported by a pair of slender colonettes surrounds a high-relief image of the Virgin and Child. The Virgin is crowned and draped in a flowing mantle gathered on her left hand. In her left hand she also holds her infant son Jesus, who reaches for the apple or orb she offers him. Like most ivory folding shrines of the fourteenth century, the four hinged wings fold in to surround the central structure. The current work is fragmentary, but traces of its hinges and mechanical elements demonstrate that its assembly is unusual among surviving examples of this sculptural type. In most surviving folding shrines of ivory, the wings are attached directly to the central element by means of metal hinges or loops. In this example, the wings are attached to a pair of slats of ivory that project from the back of the central panel, an approach perhaps governed by the relative thinness of the central slab of ivory. Historical photographs demonstrate that hinges ran the whole length of the plaques, terminated in decorative pinnacles, and attached the articulated wings to the central element. Metal crockets also surmounted the gabled apexes of the wings. The hardware holding the shrine together has been removed and loops of string pass through the original holes for the hinges to hold it together. The five holes on the roof of the baldachin demonstrate the presence of pinnacles before the shrine’s disassembly and a single hole on the bottom evinces the shrine’s previous attachment to a now-missing plinth or base. A further hole on the back of the central carving once allowed it to be mounted to a wall, and was perhaps added in the nineteenth century for display in an art collection. The thick layer of gilding and paint may date to the nineteenth century, as well. The holes drilled through the center of the baldachin and the center of each narrative scene on the wings once anchored the hinges to the ivory.

The iconography of the carving also revises models that Parisian ivory carvers customarily replicated with little alteration. Typically for ivory folding shrines, the Virgin and Child is carved in deep relief against a flat ground, while the scenes in the wings are carved in low relief. In the central carving, Jesus reaches out to touch an apple or orb that Mary holds in her hand, a reference either to the fruit of the Tree of Life or the imperial orb symbolizing Mary and Jesus’s rule as the King and Queen of Heaven. The wings represent moments from the pregnancy of Mary and the early life of Jesus. The carvers responsible for the wings have divided them into three registers instead of the customary two. They added scenes not typically encountered in ivory carvings of this type, namely the Massacre of the Innocents and the Annunciation to the Shepherds, while removing the Visitation, a scene that is almost universally encountered in shrines of this type.

Further Reading:


John Lowden and John Cherry, Medieval Ivories and works of Art: The Thomson Collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto: Skylet Publishing/The Art Gallery of Ontario, 2008), pp. 59-61.

Paul Williamson and Glyn Davies, Medieval Ivory Carvings, 1200-1550, Part 1 (Victoria and Albert Museum Publishing, 2014), pp. 137-158.



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

George and Florence Blumenthal, Paris and New York (from at least 1919-1941)

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Masterpieces from the George Blumenthal Collection," December 8, 1943–?

Oklahoma City Museum of Art. "Songs of Glory: Medieval Art from 900–1500," January 22–April 29, 1985.

Gnoli, Umberto. "Avori francesi nella galleria nazionale di Perugia." Bollettino d'Arte, o.s., 8, no. 9–12 (September–December 1919). p. 110, fig. 3.

Koechlin, Raymond. Les Ivoires Gothiques Français: Volume I, Text. Paris: Editions Auguste Picard, 1924. no. 141, pp. 126, 129.

Koechlin, Raymond. Les Ivoires Gothiques Français: Volume II, Catalogue. Paris: Editions Auguste Picard, 1924. no. 141, pp. 62–63.

Rubinstein-Bloch, Stella. Catalogue of the Collection of George and Florence Blumenthal, New York: Volume 3, Works of Art, Mediaeval and Renaissance. Paris: A. Lévy, 1926. pl. III.

Morey, C.R. "Italian Gothic Ivories." In Medieval Studies in Memory of A. Kingsley Porter, edited by Wilhelm R. W. Koehler. Vol. I. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1939. no. XVI, p. 193.

Verdier, Philippe. "Le Triptyque d'ivoire à volets peints au Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon." Bulletin des Musée et Monuments Lyonnais 7, no. 2 (1982). p. 25, fig. 7.

Songs of Glory: Medieval Art from 900 to 1500. Oklahoma City: Oklahoma Museum of Art, 1985. no. 89, pp. 248–250.