This square ivory diptych leaf is carved in low relief with the Adoration of the Magi within a quatrefoil, made ca. 1873-1883. Although acquired as of fourteenth-century date in 1884, for stylistic reasons it is obvious that the plaque is not medieval and therefore a fraudulent copy. If the plaque originally formed the left leaf of a diptych, the right leaf presumably contained the Crucifixion; it is quite possible, however, that it was made as a supposed single fragment, and that the cracks were artificially contrived.

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.