This panel from an ivory diptych depicts the Coronation of the Virgin with Mary and Christ surrounded by angelic musicians, representing the court of heaven. A related ivory diptych in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, illustrates the Coronation and the Dormition of the Virgin.
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Artwork Details
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Title:Right Leaf of a Diptych with Coronation of the Virgin
Date:late 14th century
Geography:Made in probably Venice, Italy
Culture:Italian
Medium:Elephant ivory
Dimensions:Overall: 4 3/16 x 3 1/16 x 3/16 in. (10.6 x 7.8 x 0.5 cm)
Classification:Ivories-Elephant
Credit Line:The Cloisters Collection, 1971
Object Number:1971.49.4
This ivory panel is one side of a diptych, a devotional object made of two panels fixed with a hinge that users held like a book or displayed on a flat surface during meditation and prayer. The back of the panel is smooth and flat, revealing the vertical grain typical of fourteenth-century ivory carving. The entire front of the panel is consigned to a single bas-relief carving representing the resurrected Jesus crowning Mary as the Queen of Heaven in the presence of a company of music-making angels. A canopy of five arches and gothic tracery surmounts this scene, and a wide, smooth frame circumscribes the whole on all sides. On the left side of the frame there are three small holes now filled with ivory plugs. Inspection of the back reveals that these holes are associated with a pair of square indents and are likely remnants of its original hinges. The other hole at the top, also plugged with ivory, may date from the nineteenth century, when collectors commonly hung medieval ivories on walls. The yellow patina of the ivory is particularly pronounced on the back which also shows several fields of discoloration and preserves a pair of inventory stickers.
Formal characteristics of this work demonstrate a concerted attempt on the part of Italian ivory carvers to adapt a Parisian prototype for a local market. The current panel’s iconography, rectangular silhouette, and arcade of Gothic microarchitecture certainly conform to Parisian models, but the handling of the canopies suggests a degree of distance from the original source material. Contrary to Parisian practice, the smooth border is stepped back from the level of the carving, and the carver has made extensive recourse to drilling, especially in the eyes. The carver has also stacked figures to create the sense of a crowded scene of angelic musicians, a quality rarely encountered in contemporary reliefs made north of the Alps.
That said, the basic composition of the Coronation of the Virgin has clear French antecedents, as demonstrated by three examples in the collection (see acc. nos. 30.95.124a, b; 10.134.7; 61.8). On all three of these examples, the death of Mary (also called The Dormition of The Virgin), occupies the left-hand leaf. An intact diptych that presents a clear stylistic affinity to the current fragment also shares this format (Victoria and Albert Museum, inv. no. A.566-1910), confirming that this standard pairing remained consistent in Italian workshops, and that the now-missing left panel represented this scene.
This diptych half is a particularly sophisticated and accomplished example of an Italian ivory carving modelled on a Parisian prototype, it stands as witness to a larger practice wherein Italian carvers and merchants emulated high-status Parisian ivory carvings in order to get a toehold in the upscale luxury goods market. A mirror case (acc. no. 17.190.257) and a fragment of a comb (acc. no. 17.190.244) also demonstrate an effort to mimic luxury toiletries made in the shops of Parisian ivory carvers. As demonstrated by an Embriachi box now in the Museo Nazionale di Ravenna, (inv. no. 1032) that incorporates two covers from a mid-fourteenth-century French writing tablet representing a parlor game called Hot Cockles, French ivories circulated in Italy at that time and were present in the shops of ivory and bone carvers . Together with the political setbacks of the Hundred Years War, this competitive appropriation of models and markets helped to spell the end for ivory carving in Paris, which ceased to be a major producer in the years after 1400.
Further Reading:
Paul Williamson and Glynn Davies, Medieval Ivory Carvings, 1200-1550, Part 1 (London: V&A Publishing, 2014): pp. 314-315.
Benedetta Chiesi, "Ivories of the 14th–15th Centuries: The Pride and Ill-Fortune of a ‘Venetian Commodity'" in Typical Venice? The Art of Commodities, 13th – 16th Centuries, ed. Ella Sophie Beaucamp and Philippe Cordez (Turnhout: Brepols Publishing, 2021): pp. 87-106.
Catalogue Entry by Scott Miller, Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial and Research Collections Specialist, Department of Medieval Art and The Cloisters, 2020–2022
Ernst and Marthe Kofler-Truniger, Lucerne (sold 1971)
Kunsthaus Zürich. "Sammlung E. und M. Kofler-Truniger, Luzern, Zürich," June 7–August 2, 1964.
State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts. "Dekorativno-Prikladnoe Iskusstvo ot Pozdnei Antichnosti do Pozdnei Gotiki," June–December 1989.
State Hermitage Museum, Leningrad. "Dekorativno-Prikladnoe Iskusstvo ot Pozdnei Antichnosti do Pozdnei Gotiki," February–July 1990.
Schnitzler, Hermann, Peter Bloch, and W. F. Volbach. Sammlung E. und M. Kofler-Truniger, Luzern: Skulpturen – Elfenbein, Perlmutter, Stein, Holz; europäisches Mittelalter. Vol. 1. Lucerne: Verlag Räber & Cie, 1964. no. 103, p. 30.
"Departmental Accessions
." Annual Report of the Trustees of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 101 (July 1, 1970–June 30, 1971). p. 21.
Raggio, Olga, ed. Patterns of Collecting: Selected Acquisitions, 1965-1975; Explanatory Texts. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1975. p. 17.
Pushkin Museum and State Hermitage Museum. Dekorativno-Prikladnoe Iskusstvo ot Pozdnei Antichnosti do Pozdnei Gotiki: Kratkii Katalog Vystavki. Moscow: Pushkin Museum, 1990. no. 60, p. 12.
State Hermitage Museum. Dekorativno-Prikladnoe Iskusstvo ot Pozdnei Antichnosti do Pozdnei Gotiki. St. Petersburg: State Hermitage Museum, 1990. no. 60, pp. 126–27.
Williamson, Paul, and Glyn Davies. Medieval Ivory Carvings, 1200–1550. Vol. 1. London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 2014. p. 315.
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