- Gallery Text
-
In the late Middle Ages, Christian spirituality increasingly focused on the salvation of individual souls. Devotional practice was no longer confined to the liturgy, but was supplemented with private prayer. Individuals acquired their own prayer books, and the growing aristocratic and bourgeois classes commissioned small devotional works, like the portable ivory shown here. The invention of printmaking led to the proliferation of sacred images, some inspired by earlier manuscript illuminations. Other objects, like the bronze plaque here, were in turn modeled after prints.
[1946.56, 1957.217, 1962.282, BR65.10]
- Identification and Creation
-
- Object Number
- 1946.56
- People
-
Unidentified Artist
- Title
- Diptych with Four Scenes from the Life of Christ
- Other Titles
- Alternate Title: Diptych with four Representations of Religious Sciences
- Classification
- Sculpture
- Work Type
- sculpture
- Date
- 14th century
- Places
- Creation Place: Europe, France, Ile-de-France
- Culture
- French
- Persistent Link
- https://hvrd.art/o/228472
- Location
-
Level 2, Room 2440, Medieval Art, Medieval Art
View this object's location on our interactive map - Physical Descriptions
-
- Medium
- Ivory
- Dimensions
- 21.7 x 12.9 x 1.6 cm (8 9/16 x 5 1/16 x 5/8 in.)
- Provenance
- [Brummer Gallery, Inc., New York, NY, December 1946, sold;] to the Fogg Art Museum by friends of Rosalind Gray Potter.
- Acquisition and Rights
-
- Credit Line
- Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Gift in memory of Rosalind Gray Potter from a group of friends
- Accession Year
- 1946
- Object Number
- 1946.56
- Division
- European and American Art
- Contact
- am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu
- The Harvard Art Museums encourage the use of images found on this website for personal, noncommercial use, including educational and scholarly purposes. To request a higher resolution file of this image, please submit an online request.
- Publication History
-
Georg Swarzenski, "A Gothic Ivory Diptych", Bulletin of the Fogg Art Museum (December 1947), X, 6, p. 179-84. p. 180, repr.
Richard H. Randall, Jr., The Golden Age of Ivory: Gothic Carvings in North American Collections, Hudson Hills Press (New York, NY, 1993), no. 58, p. 68, repr.
Gothic Ivories Project, website, Courtauld Institute of Art, 2010, http://www.gothicivories.courtauld.ac.uk/
- Exhibition History
-
The Spirit of the Cathedral, Old South Church, Boston, 05/01/1964 - 05/31/1964
Re-View: S422-423 Western Art of the Middle Ages & Renaissance, Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Cambridge, 08/16/2008 - 06/18/2011
32Q: 2440 Medieval, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 11/16/2014 - 01/01/2050
- Subjects and Contexts
-
Google Art Project
-
This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of European and American Art at am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu