This is an ivory diptych made in France (Paris), in about 1300. It represents the Virgin and Child on the left leaf and the crucifixion on the right. The ivory was tested in 2011 for radiocarbon dating, which placed it to a date of 1227-94, with a 95.4% probability. This prompts a reconsideration of this striking diptych. While in the 19th century it was much admired, from the time of Koechlin onwards it has been dismissed as a 19th century forgery, in the style of his 'premier atelier novateur' of about the middle of the fourteenth century.
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.