Box with Standing Saints

This box is composed of six ivory panels in a modern armature of gilt copper bands. A repeating motif of a quatrefoil within a square adorns the four panels that make up the sides, while the carved lid is divided into four inhabited niches surmounted by trefoil gothic arches and crocketed gables. On the proper left, Saint John the Baptist wears his hair shirt and gestures to the Agnus Dei (Lamb of God) within a nimbus. He gazes to the right, where Saint Christopher carries a young Jesus across a river. In the next niche, Saint Peter holds his book and his large key and gazes at Saint Paul, who bears a sword and a book. The dividers in the lid’s architectural frame serve as flat backing for the hinge plates, which are attached to the ivory panel with copper rivets that reuse the holes from the original hardware. The lid has suffered three major breaks, which were repaired and filled with a white putty while in the Blumenthal Collection in the first half of the twentieth century.

This box’s lid dates to the fourteenth century and was likely made in the ivory carving center of Paris, while the sides, bottom, and metal armature are modern. Boxes with figures under arcades survive from fourteenth-century France in relative abundance, both for secular and religious subjects. The lid closely resembles examples in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum (acc. no. 263-1867) and the Kunstgewerbemuseum in Berlin (acc. no F 706). In both examples, the arcade and figural composition continue around the sides, and a similar composition is exhibited on boxes with courtly love themes in the Louvre (acc. no. LP 615) and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (acc. no. 64.1467). The repeated quatrefoil pattern on the current box is otherwise unknown among surviving ivory boxes of fourteenth-century France. This irregularity, along with aspects of construction of the sides and base, namely the flat edges lacking the rabbet joints that typically hold together the corners of fourteenth century Gothic chests, suggests that the four sides and the base are post-medieval. This reconstruction dates to before the year 1906, when the French art magazine Les Arts published photographs of the box in its current condition in an article about the collection of its then owner, M. Paul Gautier.

Although rarer than their courtly counterparts, gothic ivory boxes decorated with religious imagery survive in substantial numbers. Their similar dimensions to boxes depicting romance scenes imply that they shared a function as receptacles for the small personal articles of the elite, for instance jewelry, perfume bottles, hygienic tools, or cosmetics. Given its religious imagery, the lid of this box may be a fragment of a chest with ritual function. The postmortem inventory of Charles V, King of France from 1364 to 1380, also speaks of ivory boxes or boistes that held Eucharistic bread during Mass, one of which the king kept in his own study (Labarte 129, 235). An inventory of the collegiate church of Saint-Amé in Douai also refers to five boistes bound with silver and copper, one of which was "for the high altar" (Deshaisnes, 546). Medieval terminology for small containers is difficult to interpret, but it is possible that in the fourteenth century rectangular boxes occasionally took the role more commonly occupied by the round Eucharistic box that modern art historians call a pyx or pyxis. Whatever their initial use and significance, ivory boxes could find new roles after their donation to churches. An ivory box similarly adorned with figures of saints, now the treasury of Capri Cathedral, houses documents that tabulate the Cathedral’s relics, while another depicting court romances serves as a reliquary in Wawel Cathedral in Cracow. Thus underscoring their affinity to courtly boxes, the related example in Capri demonstrates that boxes with sacred imagery underwent successions of function as they passed between the hands of elite buyers and religious institutions.

Further Reading:

Archer St. Clair and Elizabeth Parker McLachlan, The Carver’s Art: Medieval Sculpture in Ivory, Bone, and Horn (Rutgers, NJ: The State University of New Jersey and the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, 1989).

Richard H. Randall Jr., "Popular Romances Carved in Ivory," In Images In Ivory: Precious Objects of the Gothic Age, edited by Peter Barnet (Detroit: Detroit Institute of Arts, 1997), pp. 62-79.

Paul Williamson and Glyn Davies, Medieval Ivory Carvings, 1200-1550, Part II (London: Victoria & Albert Museum Publishing, 2014), pp. 653-706.


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

Paul Casimir GarnierParis (by 1906-1916); his sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris (December 18-23, 1916, no. 45); George and Florence Blumenthal, Paris and (by 1926-1941)

Museum of Fine Arts, Springfield. "Exhibtion," June 19, 1945–March 29, 1963.

Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University. "The Carver's Art: Medieval Sculpture in Ivory, Bone, and Horn," September 9-November 21, 1989.

Migeon, Gaston. "La Collection de M. Paul Garnier: II. – Objets d'Art du Moyen Age et de la Renaissance." Les Arts 53 (May 1906). p. 16.

Collection Paul Garnier: Objets d'art & de haute curiosité du Moyen Age, de la Renaissance, des XVIIe, XVIIIe siècles et autres. Paris: Hôtel Drouot, December 18-23, 1916. no. 45, p. 12.

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. VIII.

St. Clair, Archer, and Elizabeth Parker McLachlan, ed. The Carver's Art: Medieval Sculpture in Ivory, Bone, and Horn. New Brunswick, N.J.: Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, 1989. no. 22, p. 58.

Williamson, Paul, and Glyn Davies. Medieval Ivory Carvings, 1200–1550. Vol. 1. London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 2014. p. 491.