This is an ivory pax, made in France (Paris or probably Dieppe) in about 1500 or the nineteenth century. A radiocarbon test carried out in 2013, obtained a date of 1448-1631 with a 95.4% degree of probability, but doubts remain. There is the possibility that the pax was not intended as a forgery but as an honest neo-Gothic pax made in the mid-nineteenth century, following the revival of the cult of the Virgin of Boulogne in the years before.

The image represents Nôtre Dame de Boulogne, a miraculous and miracle-working statue of the Virgin and Child said by popular legend to have appeared off the coast of Boulogne-sur-Mer in the seventh century and to have been widely venerated in the eponymous church in Boulogne until the French Revolution, when it was destroyed.

A pax is a tablet or board, sometimes of silver, usually decorated with a Christian religious representation. A pax was used at the end of mass as part of the ‘Kiss of Peace’ ritual after the Angus Dei. First the priest would kiss the tablet, then the members of the congregation. England was precocious in introducing the pax, but references abound elsewhere from the beginning of the fourteenth century onwards. Paxes could be made from many materials, including wood, copper, silver and gold, as well as ivory.
The earliest, fourteenth-century, examples are invariably decorated with the Crucifixion, but the imagery rapidly diversified to take in other scenes connected with the Christ’s Passion and Sacrifice. By the fifteenth century the choice had expanded, with many scenes of the Virgin and Child.