This ivory diptych was made in about 1375-1400 in France. It represents four Saints: St. John the Evangelist with palm and book; St. John the Baptist with the lamb in a disk; St. Catherine with palm and wheel; St. Margaret issuing from the back of the dragon.
This type of diminutive devotional diptych seems, to judge from surviving examples, to have become increasingly popular in the second half of the fourteenth century. Diptychs of comparable dimensions survive in various styles, such as in openwork, with hatched backgrounds, or with elaborate architectural canopies, and were sometimes mounted in metal frames.

The devotional diptych is in many ways the object type most associated with the notion of Gothic ivory carving. The earliest examples probably date to the 1240s; these are complex, large and ambitious works that emerged, somewhat surprisingly, with no obvious precursors. The owners of ivory diptychs sometimes appear within their images. Such portraits indicate that they were special requests on the part of their commissioners, and they parallel the similar figures that appear in manuscripts and panel paintings of the period. The iconography of Gothic diptychs oscillated between two poles. The first of which is the desire to present narratives (Life of Christ and Virgin Mary) for envisaging. The second was the use of non-narrative images to form the focus of devotion.
Diptychs consisted of two tablets hinged together, while triptychs were two tablets hinged on either side of a central tablet. The smaller ones were probably held in the hand and opened like a small book, while the larger ones would have stood open on a table or altar. The present diptych is small and in this context, the matched holes through the present diptych suggest that is was suspended from a cord, enabling it to be worn by the owner.