Christ appears here in judgment, displaying the wounds in his hands and flanked by angels holding objects associated with his suffering. The kneeling Mary and Saint John intercede on behalf of the resurrected dead, rising up below. Among these is a pope. Below is the Anointing of the Body of Christ.
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Artwork Details
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Title:Leaf from an Ivory Diptych
Date:1250–1300
Geography:Made in Paris, France
Culture:French
Medium:Elephant ivory with traces of polychromy
Dimensions:Overall: 7 9/16 x 3 1/2 x 3/8 in. (19.2 x 8.9 x 1 cm)
Classification:Ivories-Elephant
Credit Line:Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1917
Accession Number:17.190.280
This ivory panel is the right leaf of a folding diptych, a type of religious object composed of two panels that fold like a book. The three holes and drilled circles on the left edge remain from the hinges that once joined it to the matching leaf. The two small holes on the right edge secured the hook that held the diptych closed when not in use. The motion of this hook left a brown, arc-shaped stain. The back of the panel is smooth and rounded at the sides, displaying the vertical orientation of the ivory grain. The back preserves three stickers and the remnant of earlier conservation work in the form of a plaster fill in a large hole. The detached opposing leaf was formerly in the Ashmolean Museum but is now lost. It was likewise divided into two registers, its upper depicting the death of Jesus on the cross in the presence of his disciples and members of the Jewish community, with the lower depicting his grieving followers retrieving his body from the cross for burial.
The friezes of flowers, the robes of Mary, John, and Jesus in the upper register, and the shroud of Jesus in the lower register retain greenish traces of paint. The stains on the shroud retain a pattern in the form of alternating stripes of light bands and dark bands surrounded by while borders. The panel is damaged. A pair of small holes are visible between the central figures emerging from the tombs at center, probably a remnant of a nineteenth-century hanger. The plaster-filled hole is visible also behind the right shoulder of Jesus, as is a series of scores on his left knee, and there are dark dehydration cracks in the flat background. Wear is visible on the hovering angels and the figures rising for judgement, but the central figures largely spared breakage.
The panel’s front is divided into two registers of figural carving, both capped with a frieze of flowers. In the lower register, three of the apostles embalm and bury the dead Jesus as angels with incense boats descend from clouds to cense the scene. In the upper register, the resurrected Christ sits on a throne displaying his wounded hand, with the crown of thorns on his head, and the wound from the spear of Longinus visible on his bare torso. The kneeling forms of his mother Mary and John the Evangelist flank him, and angels bearing the tools of his passion (a trope known as the arma Christi) descend as Christ judges the resurrected dead gathered in the trilobe arch below his throne.
With its frieze of flowers, the present ivory panel is a member of a group of early Gothic ivory diptychs that the art historian Raymond Koechlin (d. 1931) dubbed the "diptychs with a décor of roses." Koechlin’s monumental 1924 catalog still serves as a touchstone for research into medieval ivories. In his section on the diptychs with a décor of roses, he argued that a trend for robust, rectangular diptychs emerged in the later thirteenth century as an alternative to the elaborate portable shrines whose delicate pinnacles, crockets, and gables were a breaking hazard. He furthermore hypothesized that the current diptych leaf (and its now-lost left side), shared a stylistic affinity with a pair of complex gabled shrines in the cathedral treasury of Saint Sulpice du Tarn and the Hermitage and lies at the beginning of this trend. Examples from this group (acc. no. 1970.324.7a, b; Walters Art Museum inv. no. 71.124) share close iconographic and compositional similarity to the present panel but are deeply undercut and nearly in the round. It is possible that this diptych, whose low relief takes the process of simplification further, was a less expensive version of ivories made in the same or a related workshop and that a diversifying marketplace may have driven stylistic and technical change as much as desire for portability.
Further Reading:
Paul Williamson and Glyn Davies. Medieval Ivory Carvings, 1200–1550. Vol. 1. (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 2014), p. 231.
Jeremy Warren, Medieval and Renaissance Sculpture in the Ashmolean Museum: Volume 2, Sculptures in Stone, Clay, Ivory, Bone and Wood. (Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, 2014), pp. 554–55, fig. 209.
Catalogue Entry by Scott Miller, Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial and Research Collections Specialist, Department of Medieval Art and The Cloisters, 2020–2022.
Baron Albert Oppenheim, Cologne(sold 1906); J. Pierpont Morgan (American), London and New York (1906–1917)
Reno. Sierra Nevada Museum of Art. "Culture of the Middle Ages: a festival of the medieval arts," December 8–31, 1978.
Molinier, Emile. Collection du Baron Albert Oppenheim: Tableaux et objets d'art, catalogue précédé d'une introduction. Paris: Librairie Centrale des Beaux-Arts, 1904. no. 67, p. 30.
Koechlin, Raymond. "Quelques groupes d'ivoires gothiques français: Les diptyques a décor de roses." Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 4th ser., 14, no. 3 (July-September 1918). pp. 228–29, 234, 236.
Burlington Fine Arts Club. Catalogue of an Exhibition of Carvings in Ivory. London, 1923. p. 72, pl. XXXIII.
Koechlin, Raymond. Les Ivoires Gothiques Français: Volume I, Text. Paris: Editions Auguste Picard, 1924. no. 234, pp. 150–51, 155.
Koechlin, Raymond. Les Ivoires Gothiques Français: Volume II, Catalogue. Paris: Editions Auguste Picard, 1924. no. 234, p. 100.
Koechlin, Raymond. Les Ivoires Gothiques Français: Volume III, Plates. Paris: Editions Auguste Picard, 1924. no. 234, pl. LXI.
Breck, Joseph, and Meyric R. Rogers. The Pierpont Morgan Wing: A Handbook. 1st ed. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1925. pp. 90, 110, fig. 58, ill. p. 109.
Breck, Joseph, and Meyric R. Rogers. The Pierpont Morgan Wing: A Handbook. 2nd ed. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1929. pp. 90, 110, fig. 58, ill. p. 109.
Grodecki, Louis. Ivoires français. Arts, styles et techniques. Paris: Librairie Larousse, 1947. p. 100.
Boardman, Phillip C., Marcia Cohn Growdon, and Francis X. Hartigan, ed. Culture of the Middle Ages: A Festival of the Medieval Arts. . Reno, Nev.: Sierra Nevada Museum of Art, 1978. no. 19.
Barnet, Peter, ed. Images In Ivory: Precious Objects of the Gothic Age. Detroit: Detroit Institute of Arts, 1997. pp. 131, 136–37, fig. 9a.
Guérin, Sarah M. "Meaningful Spectacles: Gothic Ivories Staging the Divine." The Art Bulletin 95, no. 1 (March 2013). p. 73 (p. 55 n. 25).
Lowden, John. Medieval and Later Ivories in the Courtauld Gallery: Complete Catalogue. London: Courtauld Gallery, 2013. p. 78, fig. 42.
Warren, Jeremy. Medieval and Renaissance Sculpture in the Ashmolean Museum: Volume 2, Sculptures in Stone, Clay, Ivory, Bone and Wood. Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, 2014. pp. 554–55, fig. 209.
Williamson, Paul, and Glyn Davies. Medieval Ivory Carvings, 1200–1550. Vol. 1. London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 2014. p. 231.
Ciseri, Ilaria, ed. Gli avori del Museo nazionale del Bargello. Milan: Museo Nazionale del Bargello, 2018. p. 238.
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