Diptych with the Passion of Jesus

On this hinged diptych, two circular roundels composed of several pieces of ivory represent scenes from the Passion of Jesus. On the left scene, two groups witness Jesus’s final moments as angels descend to collect the holy blood in a pair of chalices, a reference to the Eucharistic equation of blood to wine. To the left of the cross stand the Three Maries and Saint John and to the right stand a group of four Jews. Above the cross, a sickle moon and sun hover within cloud forms representing Heaven. Below Jesus is a skull and long bones, signifying Golgotha, the hill of the crucifixion. The small scenes in the upper spandrels depict the flagellation of Jesus before his crucifixion and a group of angels. The lower spandrels depict a male and female worshiper kneeling in prayer before open books. The figural scene is bordered by flowering vines on the left and right and by grapevines on the top and bottom.

The scene on the right depicts the Entombment. The Virgin Mary occupies the center of the scene, holding the mutilated hand of her son in a variation of the

Pietà. To the left stand Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, Jews who interceded before Pontius Pilate for the body of Jesus and who took it for burial. To the right stands John the Evangelist and Mary Magdalene, recognizable by her attribute of the perfume bottle. The rock-cut setting of the tomb is signified by a stony ground line and an architectural tabernacle above the figures. The upper spandrels of this panel contain two pairs of mourning angels. The lower spandrels contain two coats of arms with crosses and two further angels. As in the scene to the left, strips of ivory carved into flowering vines border the left and the right of the roundel and strips of ivory representing grapevines border the top and the bottom.

This multi-piece composition rests within a silver frame that may be locked closed with a silver clasp. Its back is adorned with a repeating pattern of crosses and a sticker of a previous owner remains on the frame’s right side. A parchment lining on the interior has been painted with encaustic wax to contrast the ivory: blue in the circular roundels and red in the spandrels and borders. On the left panel, the parchment in the roundel around the feet of Jesus has been painted with a ground line and vegetation to suggest an outdoor setting.

This complex diptych is a precious survivor of what was once an abundant body of low-relief devotional ivories set within frames of precious materials. Records from the first half of the fifteenth century suggest they were well-known among courtiers of the ruling families of France and Burgundy. An inventory of Margaret of Flanders, Duchess of Burgundy and sister-in-law of the King of France, mentions a tablet of cypress wood with images of ivory ("un tableau de cipres de ymages d’yvoire"), as well as several other ivory "images" set upon grounds of ebony, gold, and silver. Adding even more precious materials to the expensive ivory amplified the value of ivory carvings in the eyes of royal patrons with an eye for the lavish display of material splendor.

This approach also represents a significant departure from techniques in use during the heyday of Paris’s ivory carving industry. Whereas fourteenth-century Parisian ivory workers made a panel out of a single piece of ivory carved in deep relief, the current diptych is composed of many slivers of ivory pinned and glued onto a frame, a technique perhaps indebted to techniques of constructing bone and ivory boxes long in use in the Mediterranean. This shift in technique liberated the ivory carver from the dimensions of an elephant tusk, allowing for larger panels with more complex shapes. As the present carving demonstrates, this shift coincided with an abandonment of deep undercarving and high relief. Rather, low relief carving produced works less susceptible to cracking while conserving raw material. This later concern was one of no small importance in the years after 1400, when shifts in Saharan trade routes made ivory increasingly difficult to source in Europe. A later date accords well with stylistic details of the figures, whose dynamic poses and volumetric clothes and hairstyles demonstrate the impact of the Netherlandish sculptor Claus Sluter on sculpture throughout western and central Europe in the fifteenth century.

While the assembly of diptychs out of many small pieces allowed European ivory carvers to make more extravagant works with less ivory, it also made these works susceptible to disassembly. A group of witnesses to the crucifixion in the collection (acc. no. 17.190.243) and a passion cycle with the Lamb of God surrounded by a roundel (now a private collection), survive as fragments without their frame. Indeed, most surviving openwork ivories lack their original frames or have been re-framed in the nineteenth or twentieth centuries. Two panels, one in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (inv. no. 553-1910), and another in the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. (inv. no. 1942.9.285), survive in intarsia frames of precious wood and ivory.

Further Reading:

Charles T. Little, "The Art of Gothic Ivories: Studies at the Crossroads," Sculpture Journal 23 (2014), pp. 13-29.

Paul Williamson and Glyn Davies, Medieval Ivory Carvings, 1200-1550, Part 2 (Victoria and Albert Museum Publishing, 2014), pp. 326-328.

Paul Williamson, The Wyvern Collection: Medieval and Later Ivory Carvings and Small Sculpture. Part 1 (London: Thames and Hudson, 2019), pp. 261-265.


Catalogue Entry by Scott Miller, Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial and Research Collections Specialist, Department of Medieval Art and The Cloisters, 2020–2022

Baron Albert Oppenheim, Cologne(sold 1906); J. Pierpont Morgan (American), London and New York (1906–1917)

Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux Arts de la Ville de Paris. "Exposition universelle de 1900. L'exposition retrospective de l'art francais," April 14–November 12, 1900.

Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf. "Kunsthistorische Ausstellung," May 1–October 20, 1902.

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "A New Look at a Van Eyck Masterpiece," January 25–April 24, 2016.

Catalogue officiel illustré de l'exposition retrospective de l'art français des origines à 1800. Exposition universelle de 1900. Paris: Lemercier & Cie., 1900. no. 126, 128, or 130 (?), p. 265.

Marcou, Paul Frantz. "L'exposition rétrospective de l'art français: Les ivoires." Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 3rd ser., 23, no. 6 (June 1900). p. 490.

Migeon, Gaston. L'exposition rétrospective de l'art décoratif français. Vol. I. Paris: Goupil & Co., [1901]. p. 1, ill.

Kunsthistorische Ausstellung, Düsseldorf 1902: Illustrirter Katalog. Düsseldorf: August-Bagel-Verlag, 1902. no. 1215, p. 107, pl. 80.

Molinier, Emile. Collection du Baron Albert Oppenheim: Tableaux et objets d'art, catalogue précédé d'une introduction. Paris: Librairie Centrale des Beaux-Arts, 1904. no. 78, p. 34, pl. LVI.

Breck, Joseph, and Meyric R. Rogers. The Pierpont Morgan Wing: A Handbook. 1st ed. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1925. pp. 117–18.

Breck, Joseph, and Meyric R. Rogers. The Pierpont Morgan Wing: A Handbook. 2nd ed. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1929. pp. 117–18.

Egbert, D. D. "North Italian Gothic Ivories in the Museo Cristiano of the Vatican Library." Art Studies 7 (1929). p. 202 n. 4.

Leeuwenberg, Jaap. "Early Nineteenth-Century Gothic Ivories." Aachener Kunstblätter 39 (1969). pp. 115, 118, 123.

Little, Charles T. "The Art of Gothic Ivories: Studies at the Crossroads." The Sculpture Journal 31, no. 1 (2014). p. 25–27, fig. 14–15, 17.

Williamson, Paul, and Glyn Davies. Medieval Ivory Carvings, 1200–1550. Vol. 1. London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 2014. p. 328.

Yvard, Catherine. "Gothic Ivories and their Owners: An Overview." In A Reservoir of Ideas: Essays in Honour of Paul Williamson, edited by Glyn Davies, and Eleanor Townsend. London: Paul Holberton Publishing, 2017. pp. 190, 201, Appendix no. 26.