King Solomon also made a great throne of ivory
When a relatively steady supply of savannah ivory tusks from Africa appeared in northern Europe around 1230, the tusks were not used to make the book covers and reliquary plaques typical of twelfth-century ivory carving. Those objects were scaled to the tusks of walruses and to smaller portions of elephant tusks. Instead, one subject would now be depicted overwhelmingly: the enthroned Virgin and Child. The whole tusks shipped to the textile-producing regions of northern France and Flanders inspired the first carvers and/or commissioners of Gothic ivories to fulfill a well-loved typological metaphor: Mary as Solomon’s ivory throne of wisdom, the Sedes sapientiae, upon which Christ sat as the new king. Similar figures had been made of wood and stone for centuries, but large elephant tusks helped the new statues come into closer alignment with the biblical text. Solomon’s throne was made of ivory and so the artisans made their ivory tusks into Sedes sapientiae. Material identity was layered onto the formal resemblances at the core of the theological metaphor.
Two groups of statuettes can be dated, based on their style, to the first decades of Gothic ivory carving in France: the Ourscamp group (1230–40) and the Block Style group (ca. 1240). These ivories demonstrate the technical challenge carvers faced when they were first exposed to large tusks and tasked with fashioning them into Virgin and Child statuettes. Close examination reveals that artisans first borrowed strategies from stone or wood carving before they discovered solutions grounded in the specific affordances of ivory, the morphology of the elephant tusk. The Ourscamp group in particular shows how difficult it is to situate Gothic ivories in their precise historical contexts, but provenance research points to Cistercian foundations commissioning many of these works in the first half of the thirteenth century.
This Cistercian link furnishes an intellectual backdrop for the fulfilment of the Throne of Wisdom typology, seen most clearly in a sermon for the feast of the Annunciation penned by Guerric of Igny (ca. 1080–1157), one of four twelfth-century “evangelists of Cîteaux.” Ruminating at length on the metaphor, Guerric posits a particular significance for ivory, a sort of material theology. Mary and the Throne were, through their virtue, appropriate receptacles for Wisdom itself, and therefore many early Virgin and Child statuettes were sacred containers, either originally or retrofitted. While such ivories have been called reliquaries, given the material and textual evidence for ivory pyxes, it is not relics but rather the Eucharist – bread transformed into the body of Christ, the incarnation of the Word – that is the sacred substance most appropriately contained in an ivory statuette of the Virgin. As this chapter makes clear, the metaphor of the Throne of Wisdom is most fully realized when the ivory Sedes sapientiae truly becomes a God-bearer.
Making Solomon’s Throne: The Carver’s Choice
Whether it was a carver or a patron who first recognized the symbolic potential of an elephant tusk is impossible to say, and we do not know who first thought to render a Sedes sapientiae in the metaphorically apt material of ivory.Footnote 1 Yet the first carvers of Gothic ivories struggled with the new medium; they were unsure how to go about translating their working methods from wood and stone to ungainly elephant tusks. The evidence thus reveals a very different situation from that described by Anthony Cutler, in which masterful late antique ivory carvers “knew and chose to work the optimum material available.”Footnote 2 We must acknowledge the technical unease shown by early Gothic ivory artisans, a discomfort that is particularly striking when considered alongside the savvy choices made by artists later in the thirteenth century.
The two earliest groups of ivory statuettes have been assembled on the basis of style. The so-called Vierge d’Ourscamp, now in the Dutuit Collection at the Petit Palais in Paris (Figure 2.1), anchors the first group, with two closely related statuettes at the Musée Cluny (Figure 2.2) and at the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg (Figure 2.3).Footnote 3 Dany Sandron convincingly argued for a Mosan or Champenois provenance for this stylistically homogeneous group, connecting them to such wooden cult images as the now-destroyed Majesté from Tournai (1220) and the famous Virgin and Child from Saint-Jean in Liège of about 1230 (Figure 2.4).Footnote 4 Other comparisons point more directly to the province of Hainault (Belgium), such as a linden or poplar statuette kept in the parish church of Notre-Dame d’Ayde in Marpent (Figure 2.5);Footnote 5 Mary’s strongly oval face, distinctively elongated nose, and sternly set lips are particularly close to the Vierge d’Ourscamp. Her sloping shoulders and long hair adhering to the contours of her neck also echo the closely modelled veils on the ivories in this group. Marpent’s Augustinian abbey of Notre-Dame was founded in 1244, and the statue was likely part of that foundation.Footnote 6 The Ourscamp group can thus be localized to Hainaut around the second quarter of the thirteenth century, and these works have the same artistic lineage as large-scale cult statues. In both style and iconography, the first generation of Gothic ivories descended from monumental Sedes sapientiae. In other words, they were likely carved by an ymagier.

Figure 2.1 Vierge d’Ourscamp. Hainault, 1230–40. Ivory, 36.5 × 11.1 cm. Paris, Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, ODUT01274.

Figure 2.2 Seated Virgin and Child. Hainault, 1230–40. Ivory, 30.5 × 10.5 cm. MNMA-Cluny, Cl. 398. Photo:

Figure 2.3 Seated Virgin and Child. Hainault, 1230–40. Ivory, 33 × 11.2 cm. Hermitage, Φ 33. Photo:

Figure 2.4 Sedes sapientiae. Meuse Valley, ca. 1230. Polychromed oak with rock crystal, 128 cm. Liège, collegiate church of Saint-Jean-l’Évangelist.

Figure 2.5 Majesté of Marpent. Hainaut, ca. 1240. Linden or poplar, modern polychromy, 86.5 cm. Marpent, church of Notre-Dame d’Ayde. Classé Monument historique, 1896/04/15.
In 1978 William Monroe christened the second cluster of early ivory statuettes the Block Style group because of their heavy geometric drapery folds. This group was formed around the seated Virgin at the Art Institute of Chicago (Figure 2.6),Footnote 7 and it included a standing Virgin and Child in Namur, two statuettes at the Walters Art Museum,Footnote 8 and another in a Chicago private collection.Footnote 9 A Virgin and Child at the Louvre can be added to the group (Figure 2.7).Footnote 10 Monroe convincingly dated these works to the 1240s.Footnote 11 Based on their blocky draperies, he speculated that stone sculptors may have produced the ivory statuettes while experimenting with the style on monumental worksites around France,Footnote 12 including the archivolt figures on the west façade of Amiens Cathedral (1230s–40s),Footnote 13 the exceptional Chartres jubé (1230s) (Figure 2.8),Footnote 14 and the monumental portal at the priory church of Villeneuve-l’Archevêque (built to mark the passage of the Passion relics from Constantinople to Paris in 1239).Footnote 15 Monroe’s proposal that a single workshop carved the disparate group of ivory figures cannot be maintained. Nevertheless, it is clear that the first sculptors of Gothic ivories must have worked simultaneously in other media, whether as stonemasons of the great façades or, more plausibly, as ymagiers responsible for crafting cult statues in a variety of materials. The multiple ways that the first generation of Gothic ivory carvers approached their raw material to transform the tusk into a Sedes sapientiae signal a variety of training methods.

Figure 2.6 Seated Virgin and Child. Northern France, ca. 1240. Ivory, 22.4 × 9.5 cm. Chicago, The Art Institute, Kate S. Buckingham Endowment 1971.786.

Figure 2.7 Seated Virgin and Child. Northern France (Hainault?), 1240–50. Ivory, 13.4 × 6.8 cm. Louvre, OA 11367.

Figure 2.8 Detail from the Presentation in the Temple, fragment of Chartres jubé. Limestone, with remains of polychromy. Chartres, cathedral of Notre-Dame.
At 36.5 cm in height, the Vierge d’Ourscamp is the largest of its group (Figure 2.1). The Virgin, seated stiffly on an ornate throne, has large, almond-shaped eyes – originally animated with painted irises and pupils – that stare impassively ahead.Footnote 16 She wears a finely textured cotte visible only at the collar, which is fastened with a ring brooch. A plain belt cinches a V-neck surcote at the waist. Doubled cloak strings are threaded carefully through eyelets in the mantle, and elaborate knots with tasselled ends hold the heavy outer garment in place. A veil modestly covers the Virgin’s head, hugging the contours of her neck and narrow shoulders. The back of her throne is unadorned and a large drill hole on the reverse suggests that the statue was originally mounted in a tabernacle.
In contrast to the Virgin’s staid frontality, the Child is rambunctious. Sitting sideways on his mother’s lap, Christ rests one leg on his mother’s knee and kicks the other into space. Mary delicately holds his proper left arm (whose hand has broken off), while the other extends forward. The sideways placement of the Christ child suggested to Sandron that the Vierge d’Ourscamp was originally part of a multifigure group of the Adoration of the Magi, an arrangement he compared to an ivory group today in the National Museum of Denmark (Figure 2.9).Footnote 17 Close examination of the Virgin’s right hand, damaged but not restored, reveals a hemispherical object drilled with a vertical hole. This was a recipient or base for what was probably a stem and bouquet of flowers made of ivory or another material.Footnote 18 A spray of flowers was a typical attribute, as evidenced by the broken but original flower held by the Syon Virgin (Figure 2.10).Footnote 19 The Ourscamp Child looked at this proffered object, not beyond the confines of the ivory block. With his blessing hand the Christ Child reached behind the Virgin’s floral attribute and the artist skilfully interwove the figures’ limbs.

Figure 2.9 Adoration of the Magi group. Scandinavia, ca. 1220. Ivory, precious stones, and silver foil, 17 × 12.1 × 5.1 cm. Copenhagen, Nationalmuseet, Inv. 9095.

Figure 2.10 Syon Virgin and Child. Spain, ca. 1270–80. Ivory, H 23.7 cm. Formerly owned by the Bridgettine Nuns of Syon Monastery, founded 1415. Wyvern Collection, UK, inv. 1978.
The Vierge d’Ourscamp was carved from the full breadth of a tusk about 11 cm in diameter, demonstrated by the remains of cementum (the outer layer of the tusk) around the perimeter of the statue (Figures 2.11 and 2.12). The sculptor used most of a good-sized tusk’s distal end, incorporating the nerve cavity into the base of the statuette to maximize the size of the sculpture. The natural curvature of the tusk was exploited, allowing extra space to explore the relationship between the Christ Child and the Virgin as she leans backward. The two other works in the Ourscamp group are both shorter even though they were extracted from tusks of similar breadth (Figures 2.2 and 2.3). The bases of those two are solid; the artisan worked only with ivory from above the nerve cavity (Figure 2.13). The carver pushed the height and breadth of the statuettes in the Ourscamp group to its limits, using the full diameter of the tusk and in one case even incorporating a sizeable portion of the nerve cavity in the base. While some differences can be observed among the three works, the basic technical approach is consistent and underpins their stylistic consistency.

Figure 2.13 Base of seated Virgin and Child, MNMA-Cluny, Cl. 398 (Figure 2.2).
These works differ significantly from the Block Style Virgins, in which no two are cut the same way from the tusk section and only the Virgin and Child now in Chicago incorporates the nerve cavity (Figure 2.6). The carver of the statuette from Aulne, now in Namur, adopted the most curious and awkward strategy (Figures 2.14 and 2.15). The cylindrical, 29-cm-long section of dentine that incorporates part of the nerve cavity was first squared to suppress the curve of the tusk, which would otherwise be discernible. The rectilinear form may have been more familiar to a sculptor used to working in quarried stone, but the figures and gestures of the Aulne Virgin and Child both are constrained and restricted by the cubic block: the figure is markedly narrow, only 6.7 cm by 5.4 cm. The amount of ivory wasted in this procedure is also noteworthy.

Figure 2.14 Virgin and Child statuette from Aulne. Northern France, 1225–40. Ivory, 29 cm. Namur, TreM.a–Musée des Arts Anciens, Trésor d’Oignies, inv. 33.
The technique used for the seated Virgin and Child at the Walters is equally experimental (Figures 2.16–2.18).Footnote 20 The artisan who carved this statuette from the tusk section used a woodcarver’s approach to figural sculpture. The tusk cylinder, which included the nerve cavity along its entire height, was sawn in half longitudinally to create a half-cylinder of ivory. The carver used the inner, nerve-cavity side of the tusk, the area with the softest dentine, as the back of the statuette. Dentine from the outer circumference of the tusk, which is drier, with more craquelure, was used for the figural carving. Because the figure is only 22.5 cm tall the curvature of the tusk is less marked, but it nevertheless dictates the notable tilt in the composition. The petite Block Style statuette at the Louvre was carved from the elephant tusk in a similar way (Figure 2.7). The shadow of the nerve canal running vertically along the back indicates that the sculptor worked a smaller cylinder of ivory, from well above the nerve cavity, cut longitudinally. Once again this choice was informed by knowledge of woodworking rather than experience in stone or ivory.Footnote 21

Figure 2.16 Walters seated Virgin and Child statuette. Northern France, ca. 1230. Ivory, 22.5 × 9 cm. WAM, 71.235.

Figure 2.17 Back of Walters seated Virgin and Child statuette (Figure 2.16).

Figure 2.18 Base of Walters seated Virgin and Child statuette (Figure 2.16).
The last member of the Block Style group, a standing Virgin and Child at the Walters Art Museum, employs a very different and quite innovative approach (Figure 2.19). The small base of the statuette and the generous breadth given to the gestures of the Mother and Child – the infant Jesus sits far out on the Virgin’s arm and turns back toward his mother – point to the fact that the tusk was here turned upside down. It was balanced on its narrow distal end, with the wider ivory at the proximate end used to generate the interactive gestures of the two figures. This upside-down tusk solution soon became the preferred choice for large, high-quality ivory statues of the Gothic period, even though skill was needed to balance the curving form in a way that permitted the finished work to stand upright in a stable manner. The only evidence of the nerve canal is to the left of the Virgin’s veil, where it inconspicuously exits the composition; the artisan carefully considered its concealment. This also indicates that the ivory cylinder was taken entirely from above the nerve cavity and carved from the tusk’s best dentine. In this object, then, innovative solutions specifically adapted to carving elephant ivory are being worked out and then passed down to the next generation.

Figure 2.19 Walters standing Virgin and Child statuette. Northern France, 1225–50. Ivory, 24 × 7.2 cm. WAM, 71.239.
These two constellations of early thirteenth-century statuettes, the one around the Vierge d’Ourscamp and the Block Style group, are dated around the fourth decade of the thirteenth century and bear witness to the explosion of ivory sculpture in northern Europe at this time. Rather than perpetuate the forms that previous generations had considered appropriate for ivory carving, which were suited to smaller elephant tusks or to walrus ivory, patrons and carvers of the first generation of Gothic ivories chose to create ivory versions of popular cult statues of the Sedes sapientiae. We cannot recover the social dynamics behind that decision, but close examination of the Block Style Virgins demonstrates that the ymagiers responsible for those objects were working out for themselves the best way to carve the new, large tusks. Some choices, based on training in wood and stone, were poorly adapted to the material at hand, but other innovative solutions, notably the upside-down tusk, proved highly effective.
A Place in History: The Question of Provenance
The Vierge d’Ourscamp has that name because a silver plaque on its reverse records an unusual amount of provenance information for a Gothic ivory, ostensibly tracing the work back to the now ruined Cistercian abbey of Ourscamp in the Oise, outside Noyon.Footnote 22 The reputation of Benjamin Fillon (1819–81), the collector who affixed the plaque, has been tarnished as his falsifications of a number of archaeological discoveries became known.Footnote 23 Fortunately, the Ourscamp provenance is attested in another source. Fillon had purchased the ivory from Guillaume Combrouse (1808–73), who recorded its recent biography in print: “I acquired this statuette (which passed two months ago into the cabinet of Fillon) from Monsieurs Rollin who bought it in 1850 from a Monsieur le Marquis de R. This amateur claimed that he obtained it in turn from an old priest of the abbey of Ourscamp, who had hidden it in order to preserve it.”Footnote 24 Combrouse narrates the story of the statuette, from its being hidden during the French Revolution up to the third quarter of the nineteenth century. “Monsieurs Rollin” can be identified with the Parisian auction house Rollin & Feuardent.Footnote 25 “Monsieur le marquis de R.” remains unidentified, although one candidate might be Alexandre Gabriel Raymond, marquis de Rune (1826 to after 1874), or his father, Alain de Runes (1784–1860), who initiated the building of the church at Warsy, 40 km from Ourscamp.Footnote 26 The elderly priest from Ourscamp was probably Antoine-Nicolas Duvergé (d. 1810), the last prior of the monastery, who saved other treasures of the abbey and deposited them in the neighbouring parish of Chiry where he became curate.Footnote 27 With Combrouse’s evidence, the reputed Ourscamp provenance can be taken seriously, at least back to the eve of the Revolution.Footnote 28
In contrast, little is known about the kindred statuettes at the Musée Cluny and the Hermitage. The earliest known provenance for the former is the collection of Alexandre du Sommerard (1779–1842), which was assembled in the aftermath of the Revolution and purchased for the French nation in 1843.Footnote 29 Writing in 1856, Combrouse already noted the similarity between his Vierge d’Ourscamp and the statuette on view at the newly opened museum.Footnote 30 In 1884 Czar Alexander III acquired the Saint Petersburg statuette with the collection of the Paris-based Russian diplomat Alexander Basilewsky (1829–99), which was installed at the Hermitage palace.Footnote 31 Basilewsky collected voraciously in France in the 1850s and 1860s, and the statuette’s exhibition in the 1865 Exposition universelle as part of the count’s collection confirms its purchase before that date.Footnote 32
Such brief object biographies, extending back no further than the late eighteenth century, are the norm for Gothic ivories. The lack of provenance evidence extending to the Middle Ages, which might enable analysis of the meaning and function of Gothic ivories in their original contexts, has largely frustrated their study. The Ourscamp lineage ties that Virgin statuette to a handful of thirteenth-century ivories whose pre-Revolutionary whereabouts are known. I propose that we cautiously place the Vierge d’Ourscamp in that Cistercian abbey in the Middle Ages. In 1233 Abbot William I of Ourscamp (r. 1233–57) began building its famous Rayonnant apse with thirteen ambulatory chapels, bringing the most up-to-date architectural style to the foundation.Footnote 33 It would not be surprising if the abbey acquired a new ivory statuette, a fresh liturgical furnishing to complement the modern style of the ambulatory.
A similar story of Cistercian provenance is told by the standing Virgin and Child in Namur (Figure 2.14). Entrusted by the Sisters of Notre-Dame in 2010 to the Musée des Arts anciens du Namurois, the statuette was, according to an oral tradition maintained by the sisters, found in the late eighteenth century among the ruins of the Cistercian abbey of Aulne in Hainaut, which was sacked and burned in 1794 and abandoned during the Napoleonic Wars.Footnote 34 The statuette was brought some 100 km away to the priory of Oignies (France), renowned since the Middle Ages for its metalwork. The prior, Dom Gregoire Pierlot, hid the statuette with other treasures in the wall of a farmhouse at Falisolle for twenty-four years. When Dom Pierlot became chaplain of the newly founded convent of the Sisters of Notre-Dame at Namur, he recovered the treasure and deposited it with the sisters. This detailed oral history seems trustworthy, but the important library of the abbey of Aulne was lost in the 1794 fire so we cannot substantiate the account.Footnote 35
In sum, the pre-Revolution provenance of two early ivory Virgin and Child statuettes can be traced to Cistercian foundations at Ourscamp and Aulne. In Chapter 1 we saw that sometime before 1258 Abbot Bohuslaus (r. 1248–58) of the Cistercian abbey of Zwettl purchased an ivory tabernacle when he travelled to the general chapter meeting at Cîteaux in northern France (Figure 1.7).Footnote 36 This annual gathering of Cistercian abbots represented an opportunity to share information about Cistercian life, perhaps including the rationale for using ivory Sedes sapientiae.
One additional piece of evidence ties ivory Virgin and Child statuettes to the Cistercians in the thirteenth century. The nobleman Heinrich von Seefeld (d. 1268), concerned for the sake of his soul, left the Cistercian abbey of Heiligenkreuz just outside of Vienna not only gold, silver, vineyards, and rental income but also an “ivory statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary (statuam eburneam Beate Virginis Marie).”Footnote 37 Christian Optiz found Seefeld’s donation in the abbey’s necrology, and the charter covering the stipulated donation is likewise extant. The charter adds further detail: the large ivory statuette (“Majorem ymagine Gloriose virginis Marie eboream tali forma”) was to be kept at the donor’s local church in Seefeld up to his death and brought to the abbey after he passed away.Footnote 38 However they arrived at their Cistercian foundations, a concentration of evidence links the earliest group of ivory statuettes to the order of Cîteaux.
Sedes sapientiae and the Fulfilment of a Metaphor
What did an enthroned ivory Virgin and Child statuette mean to the monks in whose liturgical environment it was deployed? On one level the white of ivory might seem to respect Cistercian proscriptions against colour in glazing and sculpture that were instituted in the twelfth century and reaffirmed in the thirteenth.Footnote 39 Yet there is more to say about the Cistercians’ promotion of this material. A hermeneutics of ivory, with particular resonance in this monastic context, directly engages with and elaborates upon the metaphor of the Sedes sapientiae.
Ivory statuettes of the Majesté – an enthroned and often crowned Virgin with a wise-looking Christ Child presented frontally on her lap – continued the twelfth-century representational tradition of Mary as the Throne of Solomon (Figure 2.20). Ilene Forsyth explicated the importance of this Old Testament type in presenting the Virgin’s theological role as Theotokos, God-bearer: Mary is simultaneously “the Mother of God and the cathedra or seat of the Logos incarnate.”Footnote 40 The vast majority of Romanesque Majestés were fashioned from humble wood, even if some especially venerated examples received elaborate revetments of silver or even gold. Solid ivory, however, deepened the referential qualities of the Sedes sapientiae as the seat of Wisdom incarnate. Whereas the wooden Thrones of Wisdom emulated the Old Testament type through a formal likeness – stiff frontality and furniture-like rigidity – the adoption of ivory reinforced the metaphor by adding a material index.

Figure 2.20 Enthroned Virgin and Child. Meuse Valley, 1210–20. Oak with traces of polychromy, 123.2 × 51.4 × 48.3 cm. MMA, 41.190.283.
In many respects this was straightforward because theologians had been thinking for some time about Mary as a specifically ivory Throne of Wisdom. This tradition was especially strong in Cistercian circles. The first sermon on the Annunciation by Guerric of Igny explicates the layers of meaning that encompassed the maternity of the Virgin, meanings inherited from generations of erudite thinkers.Footnote 41 Ivory plays an important role not only in understanding Mary’s role in eschatology but also in associating the monastic community with the dynamics of salvation. Guerric was drawn to monasticism by Saint Bernard himself and took orders at Clairvaux in 1125; in 1138 he was charged with the care of Igny, one of Clairvaux’s daughter houses. The cycle of sermons that he penned for Igny and for the nearby archbishopric of Reims circulated widely among Cistercian and other religious foundations in the following centuries. Guerric’s sermons were frequently gathered together with those of Bernard of Clairvaux, and in fact they were routinely mistaken for Bernard’s, a misattribution that augmented Guerric’s influence. Compilations of Guerric’s sermons were popular in Cistercian houses, with twelfth-century copies surviving from the monasteries of Vauclair, Loos, and Bonport;Footnote 42 a contemporary copy at Pontigny is now lost.Footnote 43 The intact monastic library of Heiligenkreuz near Vienna houses a thirteenth-century copy.Footnote 44 It is not unreasonable to posit that the abbeys of Aulne, Zwettl, and Ourscamp also had copies of Guerric’s sermons to hand.
Guerric’s first sermon on the Annunciation, a lengthy meditation that runs 213 lines in the Latin edition, focuses on the moment of incarnation as the true fulfilment of the Throne of Solomon type.Footnote 45 Beginning with the royal house of David, from which King Solomon and Mary both descend, Guerric describes the coming of the Word of God into the world as God having made a royal throne, a body, not only within the Virgin but also from her: “In her and from her Wisdom built himself a house; in her and from her he prepared a throne for himself when in her and from her he fitted a body to himself.” A few lines later Guerric reiterates this concept of material continuity between Mother and Child, underscoring that the ivory of Solomon’s throne constitutes that shared corporeality. Although the exceptional gold of Solomon’s throne (“auro fulvo nimis”) is considered briefly as a reference to the true quality of Christ’s nature – incomparable or “too much” (nimis), as experienced by the Apostles at the Transfiguration – Guerric quickly moves on to consider the metaphorical power of ivory, which he prefers:
For my part, I prefer now to wonder at that ivory of virginal chastity, so precious or rather priceless [tam pretiosum immo impretiabile], of which he who sits above the cherubim chose to make a seat for himself, saying, “this is my resting place for ever and ever, here will I sit, for I have chosen it.” How brilliant is that ivory which pleased the eyes of so great and so rich a king, in whose days silver was of no account; how cool – it did not know the heat of passion even in conception; how solid – even childbirth did not violate it; how white and at the same time how ruddy – it was filled by the whiteness of eternal light and the fire of the Holy Spirit with all their plenitude. Mary to be sure is herself whiter than snow, more ruddy than old ivory; chastity conferred on her, as we know, an incomparable whiteness and charity, or indeed martyrdom, a ruddiness brighter than that of all the elect of old. For her own soul was pierced by a sword, so that the Mother of the supreme Virgin and Martyr [that is Christ] might also be herself a virgin and martyr, white and ruddy just as her Beloved is white and ruddy.
Guerric cites God’s own words when he chose the tabernacle that the Israelites had fashioned for him and adopted the land of Sion as his eternal resting place: “This is my rest for ever and ever, here I will dwell, for I have chosen it” (Psalm 131:14). Transposing this affirmation to Guerric’s sermon on the Annunciation makes the chaste ivory throne of Solomon equivalent to the tabernacle, another Marian metaphor interwoven throughout the corpus of Gothic ivories and treated in Chapter 5. Moreover, there are intimations that the tabernacle/throne is a metonym for the community, Sion in the case of the Psalms, the Christian Church or Ecclesia in the case of Guerric’s sermon. Throughout the text Guerric maintains the symbolic identification of the corporate Church with the Virgin Mary, the throne of Solomon, and ivory.
The materiality of ivory plays an integral role in Guerric’s exegesis of the Throne of Wisdom: ivory is cool, solid, white, and ruddy at the same time. Each of these attributes summarizes an established tradition about the material that derives from scripture as well as from the scientific tradition inherited from antiquity. The medieval understanding of ivory stems from the twelve chapters that Pliny the Elder dedicated to the elephant in his Natural History (73/4 ce).Footnote 46 Numerous tales record that the elephant was a wise and ethical animal, that its mating habits were particularly modest, and that the creature was physiologically cold-blooded (“elephantis frigidissimum esse sanguinem”).Footnote 47 The myth of elephants’ cold blood can be traced to a story in Pliny about the mortal enmity between the elephant and the dragon; in the parching heat of summer the febrile dragon seeks the cold blood of the elephant to quench its thirst. By sating himself the dragon kills the elephant but is then crushed to death by the behemoth’s final fall.Footnote 48 This motif is frequently illustrated in bestiary entries on the dragon (Figure 2.21).Footnote 49 The admixture of the two creatures’ fluids allegedly yielded dragon’s blood, a plant resin with medicinal properties widely used as varnish, incense, and pigment.Footnote 50

Figure 2.21 Elephant and dragon fighting, from the chapter “On the Nature of Serpents.” English, 1180–90. New York, Morgan Library & Museum, MS M.81, fol. 78r.
Different intellectual traditions absorbed and transmitted different aspects of Pliny’s writings. Biblical commentators focused on elephants’ cold-blooded nature and their modest reproductive habits, linking these two characteristics in a causal relationship not found in Pliny. They established a physiological relationship between the quality of coldness and the virtue of chastity, one that was manifested in every part of the elephant’s body, including its tusks.Footnote 51 In his commentary on the Psalms, Cassiodorus (d. 585) remarked: “The elephant to whom these bones (haec ossa, i.e., ivory) belong is said to be most chaste (castitatis); among quadrupeds he is endowed with the highest intelligence, his intercourse with his mate is disciplined, and he enjoys no second spouse.”Footnote 52 The elephant’s moral predisposition accrued to its tusks, and ivory thus had the same signification of continence. The passage from Cassiodorus is found in his commentary on the ivory palace of Psalm 44:9–10: “Myrrh and stacte and cassia perfume thy garments, from the ivory houses; out of which the daughters of kings have delighted thee in thy glory.” For Cassiodorus Christ’s bride fittingly emerges from a house of chastity, while for Guerric of Igny the cool and chaste material is a fitting substance from which Christ could fashion his own body.
For Guerric, the import of ivory’s ruddiness (“candidus et rubicundus”) arises from the text of Lamentations 4:7, another biblical mention of ivory frequently brought to bear on the Throne of Solomon. In Jeremiah’s lament over captured Jerusalem he describes the city’s Nazarites, “separate” or “consecrated” Jews who had taken on stringent religious vows, as “whiter than snow, purer than milk, more ruddy than old ivory, fairer than the sapphire.” In his Moralia in Job, Pope Gregory the Great (d. 604) made clear that the Nazarites and their qualities, especially the ruddiness of old ivory (“rubicundiores ebore antique”), should be applied typologically to the religious elite of the Christian world. For Gregory “redder than old ivory” referred to the religious of his day exceeding the Church Fathers in “the flame of holy desire (sancti desiderii flamma signatur).”Footnote 53 Thus an important strain of exegetical thought associated red ivory with spiritual elites.
The ruddiness of antique ivory represents the fire of ardent devotion through which Old Testament figures are surpassed by the present Church, a theme of supersession explored in Chapter 3. While retaining this interpretation, Guerric added another layer in which redness connotes the blood of martyrdom. This tradition derived from Origen’s fragmentary third-century commentary on Lamentations, which stated that “because of their purity they [the Nazarites] were compared to snow, because of their brilliance to milk, but they were reddened by discipline, having been tested in those things which they promised God.”Footnote 54 Bede (d. 735), elaborating on Origen, cited a passage from the Song of Songs (5:10) in which white and red are similarly juxtaposed: the sponsa (bride) exclaims of her lover, “My beloved is white and ruddy (Dilectus meus candidus et rubicundus), chosen out of thousands.” These lines, which describe the lover’s body sensually, were understood allegorically as Christ. In them Bede read qualities specific to the Incarnation (candidus) and the Passion (rubicundus):
My beloved is white and ruddy, etc. White, because though in flesh appeared, he did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth (1 Petr. 2); ruddy, because he washed us from our sins in his own blood (Apoc. 1). And white is rightly first, then ruddy, because first the saint comes into the world, and afterwards by his bloody passion leaves this world.Footnote 55
White is the unmarked purity of sinless flesh; ruddy is the blood cruelly made to flow, washing away sins. Ivory is both white and ruddy because Christ’s immaculate flesh, the offering without stain, must be sacrificed. As Guerric notes, what represents the salvific suffering of Christ’s flesh also stands for the body of the Virgin Mary, given that her flesh became his in the womb. Mary’s body, pure and chaste, was equally tormented. Guerric often cites Luke 2:35, the prophecy of Simeon at Christ’s Presentation in the Temple – “and thy own soul a sword shall pierce” – and this would be pictured many times on fourteenth-century Gothic ivories depicting the Crucifixion.Footnote 56
The focus on blood and ruddiness seems particularly apt for the Vierge d’Ourscamp (Figure 2.1) or the Virgin and Child now in Chicago (Figures 2.6 and 2.22); their uneven colouring calls just such a description to mind. The bright white of the cementum layer contrasts starkly with the darker dentine layer underneath. How much this darkening developed with age and how much was revealed by the sculptor’s chisel is impossible to tell. Nevertheless, Guerric’s homily suggests that the patinated surface of “antique ivory,” frequently noticeable in early thirteenth-century ivory Virgin statuettes, was not seen as a flaw but rather as a paradox to be embraced because it reflected complex theological truths.
Following this reflection on the material iconology of ivory, Guerric comments next on its comparative value. He notes that Solomon chose ivory above all the precious metals and stones in his treasury:
Finally, just as Solomon had nothing among all his treasures and vast wealth so precious that he judged it preferable to ivory for that magnificent work, the throne of his glory; so did Mary find before the Lord a grace all her own, above that of all the elect, angels and men, the grace to conceive and bear God’s Son and to have a throne of glory carved [excideret] from the ivory of her body by the power of the Most High without the labour of hands. Glorious indeed is that throne and wonderful, of which Scripture says that no such work [opus] was produced in any other kingdom.
The material of ivory, “so precious or rather priceless (tam pretiosum immo impretiabile)” like the Virgin’s pure flesh, was chosen to bear the Son of God. The description of the fashioning of the throne/body of Christ introduces slippage into the binary metaphor. Equating the throne’s ivory with the flesh from which Christ was formed means that the facture of the ivory throne enrobes the Godhead in flesh; the ivory throne is the body of Christ, hewn from Mary’s own flesh in the womb. Like all medieval exegetes, Guerric relied heavily on his predecessors’ ideas and language, but this idea and the vocabulary used to express it are unique. The Annunciation sermon uses the phrase “Sine manibus excideret,” carved or excised or hewn without hands. Two ideas are important to highlight here. First, “sine manibus”: Christ’s body is an acheiropoieton, the Greek word for a miraculous image not made by human hands.Footnote 57 It is a term widely used for miraculously generated images that began to appear in the sixth century ce, icons and paintings but not sculptures.Footnote 58 Second, the unusual verb used here for carve (excido) carries strong connotations of “to fell,” more applicable to a tree or an army.Footnote 59 The violence subtending this word choice, which is unique to Guerric, harks back to the bloody ruddiness of ivory. God conceived the Incarnation with the sacrifice of the Crucifixion in mind, and the violence of the Passion is already present prior to the intervention of human hands. Ivory is thus a propitious material to think with; it lends itself to a material theology. The connotations of purity and chastity, and also of martyrdom and blood, make ivory the consummate material from which to manufacture representations of the Virgin and Child. Such images can subtly signify the whole history of salvation through their material. As Guerric wrote, “Glorious indeed is that throne and wonderful.”
Later in the sermon Guerric expanded his assessment of the value of ivory by contrasting it with precious metals and gems: “Solomon chooses neither the gold of worldly wisdom nor the silver of eloquence nor again the gem of any outstanding grace; provided that chastity is commended by humility” (144–6). The emphasis is on monastic rather than worldly virtues, and the focus on chaste and humble ivory as a precious material chosen by wise Solomon contributed to the development of a taste, a desire, or even a demand for ivory objects among those who knew Guerric’s sermon or similar exegetical traditions. Ivory was never proscribed by the austere Cistercians even though gold, silver, gems, and silk were singled out repeatedly as overly ostentatious.Footnote 60 Perhaps because it could not be monetized as quickly as those other materials, and surely because of its symbolic resonances, ivory remained in a category apart – “so precious or rather priceless.” The exegetical tradition of ivory, not only as the Throne of Wisdom but also as a perpetually chaste and humble material despite its preciousness, made religious audiences receptive to the advent of large-scale elephant tusks in thirteenth-century markets. This intellectual current predisposed sculptors and austere patrons alike to transfigure wooden Sedes sapientiae into the sumptuous yet chaste material of ivory.
Guerric’s sermon closes with three paragraphs on the ivory palace of Psalm 44, returning to the connection between Mary’s chaste body and the virtuous bodies of the monks and furthering the idea that this community of bodies, the Church, truly constitutes the body of Christ:
“Myrrh and aloes and cassia perfume your garments, from ivory palaces the daughters of kings delight thee (Ps. 44).” We understand that the ivory bodies of saints are the dwelling of Christ, are the clothing of Christ, the limbs of Christ, the temple of the Holy Spirit … these ivory dwellings exhale for him all the perfumes of the virtues and the graces.
The temple of the Holy Spirit is the community of believers, Christ’s body, a structure fashioned of ivory. Yet Guerric understands that the communal body of Christ is made perfect and is not naturally so: “We dwell to be sure in houses of mud, but what are of mud by reason of their material, come to be of ivory through the virtue of continence” (176–8). Unlike Mary’s ivory body, which is chaste by nature, the earthen bodies of the faithful must be transformed into the purity of ivory by the practice of continence. The monk’s fleshy body is made pure and Christlike through chastity. Mary’s virginal flesh is Christ’s flesh, and as the material from which Christ “fitted a body,” it is the material of the corporate body of Christ, the Church. As Guerric says, “The rest of what Scripture has to say about the magnificence of that throne, if anyone wishes to treat of it, will be more aptly applied, if I am not mistaken, to the Body of Christ which is the Church” (94–8).
The Virgin As Receptacle
Maria-Ecclesia as ivory – that is, as chastity – is a recurring topos in the corpus of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century ivories. In addition to the fundamental chastity of the material, the formal similarity of containment is rearticulated in ivory objects of many types: just as Mary bore Jesus in her womb, so the Church welcomes the body of Christ, the congregation, into a physical building.Footnote 61 A number of stylistically heterogeneous Virgin and Child statuettes made between 1230 and 1250 were fitted with small chambers, often described as relic compartments, hewn into the back of the statuette or excavated from underneath. In some cases the cavities appear to be original. An early variant occurs in an Adoration of the Magi group made of walrus ivory at the British Museum (1856,0623.145), possibly French or English of circa 1210–20;Footnote 62 it has a rectangular cavity with a stepped lip carved into the base (Figure 2.23). The depiction of Magi bearing receptacles full of precious gifts nods to Mary’s status as royal God-bearer and to the function of enshrinement performed by the object itself. A complete lack of provenance information precludes further interpretation.

Figure 2.23 Adoration of the Magi. England (?), ca. 1210–20. Walrus ivory, 8.9 cm. BM, 1856,0623.145.
A number of later ivory statuettes were retrofitted to function as reliquaries, such as the seated Virgin and Child at the Musée Cluny (Cl. 11155), with a polygonal cavity carved in its abdomen (Figure 4.26). Others were later mounted onto reliquary bases, such as those at the Wallace Collection in London (S 253) or in the Dommuseum Hildesheim (DS 41).Footnote 63 Such alterations are hard to date, but two of the pre-1250 statuettes that have original compartments accessible in their bases or backs merit detailed examination.Footnote 64 The enshrining function of the statuettes augments and reinforces their Sedes sapientiae iconography, whether it was planned from the outset or reinforced by later alteration.
Perhaps the best-known statuette with a receptacle is now at the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg (1893.199; Figure 2.24).Footnote 65 A seated Virgin trampling a lion and serpent beneath her feet is carved from slightly more than a solid semi-cylinder of elephant tusk from well beyond the nerve cavity.Footnote 66 While the figures are rendered fully in the round, the throne itself is not: its sides are carved elaborately with arcades and acanthus leaves, but the back is flat and unadorned, with a hollowed-out semicircular chamber (Figure 2.25).Footnote 67 The cavity originally closed with a sliding lid, as remains of grooves along the vertical sides of the opening reveal.Footnote 68 A sliding mechanism for repeated opening and closing of the cavity indicates less concern for security than for easy access.Footnote 69

Figures 2.24 Seated Virgin and Child. Southwest England, ca. 1240. Ivory (with restorations), 11.8 × 8.3 × 5 cm. Hamburg, Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, 1893.199.
There has been much discussion about the dating and localization of the petite Hamburg statuette,Footnote 70 but Malcolm Thurlby argued most convincingly for production in England, probably in the southwest, about 1240.Footnote 71 He compared the style and iconography of the seated Virgin and Child with an image in the Amesbury Psalter (Oxford, All Souls College, MS 6, fol. 4r), in which the Virgin tramples the same lion and dragon and sits on a remarkably similar architectural throne topped with fleshy acanthus leaves (Figure 2.26). This perspicacious comparison may well be correlated with an ivory Virgin and Child that the prioress of Amesbury (perhaps Felicia, r. 1227–ca. 1238) is recorded as having presented to King Henry III on 9 December 1234 (“i. ymaginem eburneam de sancta Mar(ia) ex utraque parte inosam [inciscam?]”).Footnote 72 Although the relevant gift roll’s informal hand is difficult to make out, it seems to indicate that the prioress gave the king an ivory statuette of Saint Mary with both parts carved out. Given its similarity to the Amesbury manuscript’s style and iconography, its material, and likely date, the Hamburg Virgin and Child may be tentatively identified with the prioress of Amesbury’s 1234 gift. While the intended use of a such a statuette is not specified in the gift roll, it provides compelling corroboration that ivory statuettes with receptacles were made, gifted, and appreciated in the early thirteenth century.
Another thirteenth-century ivory statuette-container is now in the Museum August Kestner in Hannover (WM XXIa 40); it is the only such object with a reliable provenance known to have been uses as a reliquary, at least in the early modern period (Figure 2.27). The Virgin sits on a low throne with the Christ Child perched high on her lap. The heavy block-style drapery with considerable massing at the socle prompted Danielle Gaborit-Chopin to associate the Hannover Virgin with the Davillier Virgin (Louvre, OA 2742) and her standing sister at the Victoria and Albert Museum (209–1867), both works of a single northern French master working around the year 1240.Footnote 73 While this comparison is apt in many respects, the drapery on the Hannover Virgin is shallower and her facial type demonstrates a stronger awareness of anatomy and realistic modelling that point to a later execution. Notwithstanding these differences, the comparison helps us date the Hannover statuette to about 1250 and localize it tentatively to northern France. The most prominent difference with the Davillier group is the cavity carved into the back of the Hannover Virgin: a trilobed aperture with a stepped outline and hinge holes to accommodate doors (Figure 2.28). This feature transformed the Virgin into a container, a vessel for holding sacred matter.

Figure 2.27 Virgin and Child from the Goldene Tafel, once in the abbey church of Saint Michael in Lüneberg. Northern France (or Rhineland?), 1240s. Ivory, 14 × 7.6 cm. Hannover, Landesmuseum, WM XXIa 40.

Figure 2.28 Back of Hannover Virgin and Child (Figure 2.27).
The Hannover statuette is among the treasures depicted on a now lost fifteenth-century inventory drawing of the reliquaries kept inside the Goldene Tafel of the Benedictine abbey church of Saint Michaelis in Lüneberg.Footnote 74 Created to complement the rebuilt church (1376–1418), this double-winged altarpiece reused an Ottonian altar frontal as its centrepiece, surrounded by niches to display the rich collection of reliquaries donated to the abbey by members of the Guelf family. The legend on the drawing indicated that in the third compartment from the left in the bottom register were “two images of the Blessed Virgin Mary, one of ivory and the other of wood,” and sketched below was a seated Virgin, labelled “eburnea” (ivory).Footnote 75 After a theft in 1698, inventories of the contents of the Goldene Tafel before and after were published together with an engraving (Figure 2.29).Footnote 76 In both cases the ivory statuette is described as a reliquary: “Die Mutter Gottes von Elffenbein voller Reliquien” and “Das Bildniß Mariae mit etwas von ihrem Hemble.” The image of Mary allegedly contained some of her own cloak.

Figure 2.29 Die Goldene Tafel in geöffnetem Zustand, copperplate engraving by Johann Christoph Böcklin, 1700. Compartment with ivory Virgin, third from left on the lower register. From Sigismund Hosmann, Fürtreffliches Denck-Mahl der Göttlichen Regierung: Bewiesen an der uhralten höchst-berühmten Antiquität des Klosters S. Michaelis in Lüneberg (Braunschweig, 1700), after p. 66.
An association between the ivory statuette with heavy block-fold drapery and a relic of that very mantle may seem compelling, but it was not contemporary with the statuette’s manufacture. The piece of the Virgin’s cloak was among the Marian relics (along with her hair and milk) that sanctified an altar in the crypt of Saint Michael’s, dedicated to the Compassionate Virgin in 1303 by Bishop Fredrich of Verden (r. 1300–1312).Footnote 77 Only with the consolidation of the abbey’s treasures in the Goldene Tafel in the 1420s was the Virgin’s cloak, previously in the crypt, placed inside the ivory statuette.Footnote 78 Therefore, even though the statuette from Lüneberg includes a cusped aperture on its reverse that is seemingly typical of the thirteenth century, it is impossible to determine whether the cavity is original or whether it dates to the fifteenth-century transformation. If the aperture predates those alterations, we might well wonder what it was used for. Early thirteenth-century ivory statuettes with cavities are usually assumed to be reliquaries, but given the lack of contemporary evidence and the preponderance of coeval textual evidence for ivory vessels serving as eucharistic containers, might these statuettes have been intended to store the reserved Host? Such a function would instantiate the dominant metaphor of the ivory Throne of Wisdom supporting the body of Christ.
God-Bearer: Eucharistic Pyxes
In the 1240s Blanche of Castile and her son Louis IX assembled all the accoutrements of a sumptuous royal chapel to send to the dowager queen’s sister Berengaria, queen of Castile (d. 1246). These included a golden chalice and paten, a cloth-of-gold retable, sumptuous silk vestments, altar cruets and crosses of rock crystal, and three ivory pyxes: “tres pixides eburnee ad panem.”Footnote 79 In the eyes of the royal household, these host-holding containers were necessary to equip a chapel appropriately. As we will see, this practice is well attested elsewhere in the documentary record. Following dictates issued in 1196, the bishop of Paris Eudes de Sully (d. 1208), speaking at the Synod of Paris (1198–1203), testified to the widespread use of ivory pyxes, admonishing parish priests who lacked the proper implements to house the Eucharist: “They are negligent those who have neither pyxes of ivory nor tabernacles where the body of Christ can be reserved with honour.”Footnote 80 Ivory is singled out as the material appropriate to hold the consecrated host, storing the body of Christ for later veneration, or to transport it to a sick communicant. Just as Solomon sat on an ivory throne and the Virgin’s chaste flesh encompassed the Logos, so ivory is the apt medium to house the Eucharist. William Durandus (ca. 1230–96), a French cleric working and writing in late thirteenth-century Rome, articulated this clearly in his pontifical. He allowed a number of different materials for the reservation of the consecrated host, namely wood, white ivory (“candido ebore”), silver, gold, and crystal, and he was clear about their broader significance: “the box (capsa) in which the consecrated hosts are preserved signifies the body of the glorious Virgin, about whom is spoken in the Psalm: Ascend, O Lord, to your rest. You and the ark of your sanctification (Ps. 131:8).”Footnote 81 Durandus argues that materiality matters when it comes to properly reserving the Eucharist.
In addition to the ivory pyx sent by Blanche and Louis IX to Castile in the 1240s, the wider documentary record attests to dozens of small ivory boxes serving as eucharistic containers. When he died at Acre in 1266, Eudes, the count of Nevers, had an ivory box (“i boiste d’ivoire”) recorded among the items in his chapel.Footnote 82 Among the papal belongings at Avignon after the death of Clement V (d. 1314) was a casket of ivory with a pyx of ivory (“piscide de ebore”) inside, along with silver tongs (“tenacula de argento”) for placing the Host in the chalice, and there was another pyx of ivory (“pissidem de ebore”) explicitly for the Host (“pro hostiis”).Footnote 83 The 1324–5 accounts of the Parisian hospital of Saint-Jacques-aux-Pèlerins allocate 20 sous for a copper cup with an ivory box, to put our Lord into the tabernacle (“une coupe de coivre avec une boite d’ivirre, pour mestre notre Seigneur [a]u tabernacle”).Footnote 84 A 1339 inventory of the chapel at the Sorbonne includes an ivory pyx for the Host (“Item pissida de ebore pro hostiis”).Footnote 85 Similarly, the 1342 inventory of Saint-Martin-des-Champs describes, on the main altar, a vessel (raissel) within which was an ivory box (“une boiste d’yvoire”) that contained the Eucharist.Footnote 86 As in the instructions from the earlier Synod of Paris, placing the ivory receptacle for the consecrated Host inside a tabernacle is recommended, following the double enshrinement prescribed in the Old Testament for the Ark of the Covenant within the tabernacle.Footnote 87
The multiple late medieval inventories and accounts of the collegiate church of Saint-Amé of Douai record not only the continuing use of ivory pyxes for the reservation of the Host throughout the fourteenth century but also the repairs made to these fragile items after much use.Footnote 88 One pyx needed repair in 1341–2, and in 1349–50 another repair was made on “the little box of ivory (boistellette divoire) that serves at the high altar, which is all broken (toute froissee), 8 s.” In 1380–1 the mounts on the same box were in need of repair: “To Pierot the goldsmith of the Bridge of Lierbe to renail (reclaver) the two hinges of the box where we put the bread at the high altar, 11s.” The 1376–7 account notes eleven ivory boxes in which bread for saying the mass was kept, suggesting that some of these boxes were used to store the unconsecrated hosts, but the larger ivory box with the problematic hinges was kept on the high altar, presumably for the consecrated Host.
Ample textual evidence testifies to the practice of using ivory boxes and pyxes for storing both the consecrated Eucharist and the bread that was to become the body of Christ during the daily miracle of the mass. Extant objects, however, are rare. Surely many of the ivory pyxes and boxes mentioned were plain and unadorned, like Siculo-Arabic caskets or the ivory boxes discussed in Chapter 1 (Figure 1.2). Well-preserved church treasuries like that at Maastricht demonstrate that dozens of such containers were on hand for a variety of purposes in the treasury and sacristy (Figure 2.30).Footnote 89 At Sens Cathedral, seat of the archbishopric that included Paris and the Île-de-France, a number of ivory boxes are preserved in the treasury. In addition to a magnificent large Byzantine dodecagonal casket with scenes from the lives of David and Joseph, there are a number of small circular ivory boxes from a variety of sources that entered the collection over the centuries.Footnote 90 Some are easy to identify, like a late antique hunting pyx that may have been part of the see’s patrimony since its founding in the fifth century,Footnote 91 or a beautifully pierced pyx from fourteenth-century Iberia with an Arabic inscription.Footnote 92 Two rather plain lathe-turned ivory pyxes are difficult to date due to their simplicity, and their attributions have ranged from eighth-century Carolingian to fourteenth-century Byzantine.Footnote 93 Such relatively unadorned items could also have been manufactured locally in the thirteenth century to respond to the need for ivory pyxes, plain Thrones of Wisdom for the body of Christ.

Figure 2.30 Vitrine with ivory capsae. Various provenances and dates. Maastricht, treasury of the cathedral of Saint Servatius.
While no ivory pyxes can be surely attributed to France in the first half of the thirteenth century, several late thirteenth- or early fourteenth-century pyxes in church treasuries suggest that this absence might be due to overuse, as with the boxes at Saint-Amé. Gothic pyxes are recognizable by their low-relief carving and were probably produced by the tabletiers (with the use of a lathe). The towering cylindrical box now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon (CA 1462), displays a detailed Infancy narrative in two circular registers (Figure 2.31). The lower register depicts the Annunciation, Visitation, Nativity, Adoration of the Magi, and Presentation in the Temple, all taking place under cusped pointed arches. The upper register, in an open, bucolic setting, includes the rare scenes of the Journey of the Magi and the Miracle of the Fields along with the Annunciation to the Shepherds, the Flight into Egypt, and the Massacre of the Innocents. Surprisingly, this exceptionally large object does not appear in any of the historical inventories of Dijonnais foundations, and any association with the Chartreuse de Champmol or the patronage of the Burgundian dukes must be viewed with caution.Footnote 94 The box is exceptional, both in terms of the amount of raw material and the fineness of its carving; Gaborit-Chopin attributed it to the carver of the Saint-Sulpice triptych examined in Chapter 6. The object’s carefully planned narrative progression emphasizes and elaborates the concept of the Throne of Wisdom, exploring subtle ways that the Sedes sapientiae resonates with types and antitypes present in the Infancy cycle. The seated Virgin and Child, the focus of the adoring Magi in the lower register, are placed in their own arch such that Mary sits back to back with Joseph from the adjacent Nativity, who swaddles the infant Christ in his arms. Emphasis on the seated figure bearing incarnate wisdom is juxtaposed with its antitype above: the Massacre of the Innocents plays out violently on the upper register, vividly opposed to the scenes of parental succour below. To the left King Herod – seated on a bench identical to that of Mary and Joseph – orders the slaughter to protect his power. Wisdom enthroned is thus juxtaposed with royal injudiciousness. The iconography thus builds on and varies the central metaphor of the ivory Throne of Wisdom.

Figure 2.31 Pyx with Infancy scenes. Paris, ca. 1280–1300. Ivory, H 14.8 × D 13.7 cm. Dijon, Musée des Beaux-Arts, CA 1462.
A small pyx of the fourteenth century, thought to come from Reims Cathedral and now in the Musée Saint-Rémi (978.28387), depicts in one arcaded register the Nativity, Presentation, Flight into Egypt, and Adoration of the Magi, with the enthroned Virgin and Child receiving the three wise men (Figure 2.32).Footnote 95 As in the Dijon pyx just discussed, Mary and the Christ Child are given prominence by being isolated under an arch all their own. They do not face the wise men approaching from the viewer’s left, however, but are oriented out toward the viewer. The ornate throne, an architectural marvel shown in receding perspective, stands as a metonym for the Old Testament type that Mary fulfills. The Virgin and Child on the Reims pyx are explicitly the ivory throne of Solomon, depicted on an object that harmonizes function, material, and iconography along one clear exegetical theme. The pyx contained the body of Christ, the ivory stood for the chaste body of the Virgin that bore Christ, and the story inscribed on its surface recounts the events of his coming into the world. The pyx, like Mary, is emphatically a God-bearer; it too carries God incarnate and offers him to the faithful.

Figure 2.32 Pyx with the Throne of Wisdom and Infancy scenes. Paris, ca. 1275. Ivory, H 7, D 7.7 cm. Reims, Musée Saint Rémi, 978.28387.
Within these ivory pyxes we can see a dovetailing of iconography, material, and function. This threefold layering seems to confirm that thirteenth-century ivory statuettes fitted with cavities were more likely intended for the reservation of the host rather than the enshrinement of relics. As a true container for the body of Christ, the ivory statuette functionally, materially, and iconographically fulfilled the powerful reference to the Old Testament metaphor of the Throne of Solomon. Privileged among early thirteenth-century patrons and carvers for its ability to extend the metaphor of the wise king’s throne, ivory is pushed to its logical limits by actually containing the Eucharist.
Conclusion
The first generation of Gothic ivory carvers fulfilled the Throne of Wisdom metaphor by making in ivory, as prescribed in scripture, what for generations had been made in wood and stone. Not only was fashioning the seated Virgin and Child from ivory a clear typological strategy but it also activated theological reflections on the shared corporeality of Mary and Christ, and therefore between the Church and Christ. The Old Testament type furnished more than the suggestion of a material: it put forth a specific function. As a recipient and support for the Incarnation, the Throne of Wisdom is a container of the divine. Ivory pyxes and ivory Virgin and Child statuettes were thus appropriate vessels for holding the transubstantiated bread of the Eucharist, the body of Christ. The Virgin as tabernacle, a theological trope that travelled together with that of the Throne of Wisdom and expresses similar conceptions of support and enshrinement. The next chapter examines the first ivory diptychs produced in Gothic France, deepening our understanding of ivory as the chaste flesh adopted by Christ by adducing another Old Testament type, the Tablets of the Law. These physical manifestations of the word of God under the Old Law present an additional layer of significance for ivory and for the self-conception of the institutional Church in the mid-thirteenth century.