Physical description
Mirror case; ivory. Depicts a lady crowning her lover, who offers his heart. The rim of the circular mirror case is decorated with four crawling monsters. In the centre, a lady, wearing a loose dress, leans forward to crown her kneeling lover with a chaplet. The kneeling lover surrenders his heart to the lady, holding his organ in his uplifted hands, snug in the folds of his cape. To the left of the couple, slightly removed from the main action, a groom or valet, wearing a hood, raises his whip with his right hand, to control two horses, whose muzzles only protrude into the picture, while holding their reins with his left hand. The mirror case has three small holes drilled through it around the kneeling lover, and a further hole below the top of the rim; all are secondary and connected with post-medieval use. There are substantial remains of gilding in the hair of both principal figures. The back has been shaved down to fit into a later setting, so that the raised rim, although still visible, shows no sign of the usual screw thread and there is no trace of the original mirror.
Place of Origin
Paris
Date
1300-1325 (made)
Artist/maker
Unknown
Materials and Techniques
Carved ivory
Dimensions
Height: 10.6 cm (Measured by M Lawrence 7th April 2005)
Width: 10.4 cm (Measured by M Lawrence 7th April 2005)
Depth: 1.3 cm (Measured by M Lawrence 7th April 2005)
Weight: 0.1 kg (Weighed by M Lawrence 7th April 2005)
Object history note
Provenance:
Préaux Collection, Paris, until 1850 (sale, January 9-11, 1850, lot 148); Rattier Collection, Paris (sale, March 21-24, 1859, lot 193); purchased from John Webb, London, in 1867 by Victoria & Albert Museum.
Historical context note
The flowering of secular ivory carving took place in Paris in the first quarter of the fourteenth century, and a variety of subjects from romance literature and daily life were represented on boxes, mirror-cases, combs, gravoirs (hair parters) and knife handles for what was apparently a considerable market . . .
. . .The ivories for secular use that appeared in profusion at the end of the first quarter of the fourteenth century were carved in the sophisticated relief style of the Paris religious ivories, which had been developed over the preceeding century in the production of diptychs and triptychs showing the lives of Christ and the Virgin.
. . . While the carved boxes were the most lavish, largest and most expensive of secular ivory products, mirror cases and combs were the most numerous and of greater utility. The guild of pigniers (comb makers) sold combs and mirrors together, sometimes with a hair parter in a leather case. Many accounts survive, such as one of the duke of Burgundy in 1367:
'Jean de Couilli, pignier, demourant à Paris, 5 fr., pour un estui garni de pignes et de mireour d’yvoire, qu’il a baillez et deliverez pour Mgr. à Guillemin Hannot, son barbier et valet de chambre.' (Jean de Couilli, comb maker, living in Paris, 5 francs for a case including combs and a mirror of ivory, which he has taken and delivered for Mgr. Guillemin Hannot, his barber and valet de chambre).
(Prost 1902, 266, no. 1460)
More mirror cases have survived than any other form of secular ivory. They are thin discs carved on the face with scenes of lovers, the Attack on the Castle of Love, or other subjects, while the back was so designed that a polished metal disc could be inserted to serve as a mirror. The ivory plaque was squared off for ease of handling and stability when set on a shelf by four corner terminals, each in the form of a small, long-eared biped monster with a long tail. The creature was in standard use by mirror makers, though an occasional example has human bipeds or lions. Many of the cases are also pierced so that they could be hung on the wall . . .
. . . The major period of production of ivories lasted only a little beyond the middle of the fourteenth century. . .The waning of the French ivory industry was largely due to the disastrous financial effects of the Hundred Years War between England and France (1337-1453), yet there was no immediate end of the use of ivory as a material. The centre of the trade moved north to the new commercial centres of Flanders and the Netherlands, and there the major production was only of religious subjects (Randall 1994). With the exception of bone chess boxes and ivory combs with garden scenes and hunts, secular subject matter virtually disappeared from the scene.
(Richard H. Randall Jr., Images In Ivory: Precious Objects of the Gothic Age, 1997, 63-79).
Descriptive line
Mirror case; ivory; Paris, France; first quarter of the 14th century.
Materials
Ivory
Techniques
Carving
Subjects depicted
Love
Collection code
SCP
