This panel is the right leaf of an ivory diptych and is carved with scenes from the Life of Christ including the Nativity and the Crucifixion. The present leaf is unusual in the placement of its scenes. The lower register reads, as was common, from left to right. This means that the missing left leaf must have featured two scenes prior to the Nativity, the only likely candidates being the Annunciation and the Visitation. The upper register reads from right to left, and here the two choices for the left leaf would have been greater, including the Resurrection, the Maries at the Sepulchre, the Noli me tangere, the Pentecost and the Ascension. The scene of the Harrowing of Hell shown here is also unusual, with no mouth of hell and with Adam and Eve shown so prominently.

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.