Walking down the rue de la Tabletterie in Paris in the decades around 1300, one could delight in the rich array of carved ivory objects for sale. These objects met many different needs, both spiritual and bodily, and were accessible at a wide range of price points. Jehan le Scelleur, whose history I traced in Chapter 1, probably lived on this thoroughfare from 1313 to 1328 and had a prominent storefront selling such wares. He sold luxury toiletry sets, cutlery sets, and devotional images, and repaired mirrors and Virgin and Child statuettes. It is likely that Jehan le Scelleur, who is called an yvoirier in the accounts of Mahaut d’Artois, also sold other types of ivory wares popular across western Europe at the turn of the fourteenth century, such as caskets (both historiated and not), paxes, pyxes, crosiers, diptychs, and triptychs. Drawing inferences from the better-documented context of manuscript production and the role of the libraire, we can understand Jehan le Scelleur as an entrepreneur taking on financial and organizational responsibility for the carving of Gothic ivories. If he was primarily a tabletier, like the previous occupant of his house, then Jehan probably invested in the purchase of the large savannah elephant tusks and was responsible for portioning the raw material into workable pieces. Jehan either maintained financial control over the material, carving the work himself or paying a nearby artisan to transform the ivory into an object later sold at his storefront, or he sold smaller pieces to artisans who maintained financial control of their own handiwork and profited from their skill. Although the documents do not tell us about Jehan’s apprentices, journeymen, or co-workers, he almost certainly had some. Étienne Boileau’s guidelines for ymagiers-tailleurs, paintres et taillières ymagiers, and tabletiers in the 1260s allowed as many valets as the master wished, as long as they had been trained in the métier and presented before the guild.Footnote 1 Jehan le Scelleur’s wife, honoured with an elegant robe by Mahaut d’Artois, might also have borne him children who helped in his trade, and perhaps she herself lent a hand. Given the prominence of his enterprise, it is unlikely that Jehan worked alone. Yet even with the abundant textual evidence for his activity, it is not possible to identify in the extant corpus of Gothic ivories any of the numerous works he sold and likely carved.
In this chapter, I examine the production of Gothic ivories a generation prior to Jehan le Scelleur, from about 1280 to 1310, drawing almost entirely on the physical evidence of the works of art themselves rather than on the documentary record. That said, one well-documented piece, the triptych from Saint-Sulpice-sur-Tarn (now Saint-Sulpice-la-Pointe) at the Musée Cluny (Cl. 13101), firmly anchors the group in time and space (Figure 6.1). Identifying the working habits of this carver’s output provides a snapshot of the vibrant production of Gothic ivories in Paris around the year 1300, allowing us to address the interface of production and reception. Close looking reveals a highly successful ivory-carving enterprise with a single prominent tabletier/yvoirier having a hand in the financial and artistic control of a neighbourhood-based community of ivory carvers and workers in adjacent crafts (like leather shaping for cases and silverwork for hinges and mounts). This is the model of production suggested by Jehan le Scelleur and by comparison with analogous métiers, and it is also one that explains the particular combination of similarities and differences visible in the extant corpus of Gothic ivories attributed to Paris around 1300.Footnote 2 In other words, the notion of an entrepreneurial yvoirier yields an etiologic explanation for the corpus of Gothic ivories that is more accurate than either the Renaissance workshop model or the solo craftsman producing Byzantine ivories.Footnote 3 I want to emphasize this point because such a model accords far better with the stylistic evidence in the corpus of Gothic ivories, and it allows us to clarify the contribution of an artisan like the carver of the Saint-Sulpice triptych. Successful yvoiriers contracted with nearby artisans to carve items for the “ready-made” market, setting a shared brief in terms of object type, iconography and composition, methods of work (facture), and polychromy schemes.Footnote 4 Among these “ready-made” objects, the figural style, or the “characteristic forms” of each carver’s style, shows a marked level of variation.Footnote 5 By contrast, the unique works that were likely bespoke or special commissions, often of prodigious size and thus significantly more expensive, are more homogeneous in figural style. These issued from the hand of the same yvoirier responsible for the Saint-Sulpice triptych (Figures 6.1 and 6.2).
Figure 6.1 Triptych from Saint-Sulpice-du-Tarn. Paris, 1296–1303. Ivory with metal hinges (modern), 32 × 28.4 cm (open). MNMA-Cluny, Cl. 13101.
Figure 6.2 Works by the carver of the Saint-Sulpice triptych. V&C = Virgin and Child
The neighbourhood-based ivory entrepreneur is an alternative to the models for production of Gothic ivories that have dominated to date, and a brief historiography is necessary in order to understand the stakes of the grouping presented here. Raymond Koechlin assembled what he saw as the products of a large and prolific workshop in Paris under the umbrella of the Marian tabernacle workshop (atelier); he estimated its total output to be about 120 ivories.Footnote 6 Koechlin believed that this workshop setting explained the evolution of certain object types, noting a gradual development from the simple triptych depicting a standing Virgin and Child flanked by two angels to a more complex work with several registers, a deeper central volume, and four closing wings instead of two.Footnote 7 In the century since Koechlin wrote, his groupings have been critiqued as too capacious and too inclusive to be useful, comprising pieces thought to emerge not only from the workshop itself but also from imitators and foreign emulators. The scholarly pendulum swung in the opposite direction, seeking the highest degree of stylistic similarity when attributing works to a single hand and yielding a number of provisional names for individual artistic personalities.Footnote 8 In 1978 Danielle Gaborit-Chopin showcased the “Master of the Saint-Sulpice triptych” as the leading ivory carver in Paris circa 1300, but her threshold for attribution was so stringent that only four works were assigned to him.Footnote 9 Sorting through the corpus of Parisian ivories from the early fourteenth century, Gaborit-Chopin identified some as from this master’s atelier but by a different hand and others as “later and more distant.”Footnote 10 She posited a dozen masters instead of one. Admitting that she struggled to reconcile the traditional workshop model with the physical evidence, Gaborit-Chopin rationalized that “rather than conceiving an enormous atelier housing sculptors working in closely related styles, but nonetheless different, a workshop to which one must attribute the core of Parisian production at this period, it seems more plausible to recognize the activity of several ateliers, contemporaneous or successive, in contact with one another.”Footnote 11 I argue that recognizing a neighbourhood-based, entrepreneurial organization of the ivory-carving industry of Paris is the best way to understand the corpus of Gothic ivories at the turn of the fourteenth century: it offers a social model that accords with the stylistic diversity.
Furthermore, given the almost complete lack of firmly dated works, it is difficult to assess the chronological duration of a style. Similarity is almost always seen as an indication of simultaneity. The productive lifespan of an artisan has never been taken into consideration, to say nothing of the longevity of a family business over several generations. In the better-studied and better-documented realm of Parisian manuscript illumination, for example, the Papeleu Master (likely Richard de Verdun) was active from 1285 to 1335.Footnote 12 While this is an extreme case, there has been no attempt in the scholarship on Gothic ivories to consider a more reasonable time span of even thirty years inflecting an individual style. Stylistic development, or more accurately stylistic change, is a concept still burdened with implicit judgments of quality and teleology, and scholars of Gothic ivories have struggled to acknowledge the contours of a lived career.
The group of about thirty works that I associate with the carver of the Saint-Sulpice triptych is larger than Gaborit-Chopin’s four objects but not as capacious as Koechlin’s atelier (Figure 6.2). They range from miniature diptychs (H 6 cm), to Marian tabernacles, from a great variety of triptychs to large statuettes (H 33 cm). The wide range of sizes and object types has long discouraged attribution to a single carver. Key elements of the Saint-Sulpice artist’s personal style are slit eyes, long swooping noses ending in a pointed tip, and wavy hair rendered in strands of equal size. The faces of women and youths tend to be teardrop shaped with round faces and pointy chins, whereas the heads of older men have the form of an hourglass with broad foreheads, sunken cheeks, and large jaws, often with long, flowing beards. Angel wings are carved simply, with the flight feathers rendered by long gouges and the shorter alular feathers indicated by polychromy alone, now often worn away. The largest and most ambitious of this yvoirier’s works also share the “constructed” technique, an additive mode of sculpture that relies on cutting and gluing in addition to carving, and therefore, observations about facture reinforce stylistic analysis.Footnote 13 As we saw in Chapter 1, prominent female tabletières as well as ymagières were active in Paris in the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, so it is impossible to know whether the carver of the Saint-Sulpice triptych was a man or a woman, but – as with most of the Parisian métiers – the former was more common. Dame Ade, however, was the wealthiest tabletière in Paris in 1292, during the active life of the carver of the Saint-Sulpice triptych.Footnote 14 While I wish to leave open the possibility that the accomplished artisan with access to court commissions might have been a woman, I will simplify the prose by using a male pronoun when necessary.
In the wake of Koechlin’s magnum opus, the tendency to date all ivories to the mid-fourteenth century remains strong.Footnote 15 This “safe” date is frequently assumed without recourse to any firmly dated works. Many of the objects discussed in this chapter have been dated relative to the remarkable Saint-Sulpice triptych, as if that work’s seventeenth-century findspot somehow strengthened the traditional dating based on stylistic analysis, between 1300 and 1325.Footnote 16 As Peter Kurmann remarked for the field of French Gothic sculpture more generally, this is truly a colossus built on feet of clay.Footnote 17 As I discuss at length in what follows, the Saint-Sulpice triptych was likely produced between 1296 and 1303, pushing the dates of a whole swath of Gothic ivories back by as much as twenty years.
Tabernacles and the “Ready-Made”
Marian tabernacles constituted the Saint-Sulpice carver’s main output. With their standardized Infancy cycle, these polyptychs, both large and small in scale, met the needs of a large part of the market that was content with a conventional devotional program.Footnote 18 They were “ready-made,” as John Gower used the term in 1393 – objects created for sale without a buyer lined up.Footnote 19 For example, a small tabernacle at the State Hermitage Museum (Ф 1508) (Figure 6.3), just over 16 cm high, represents the bread and butter of the Saint-Sulpice yvoirier’s production: a seated Virgin and Child in a narrow but deep central compartment demarcated by graceful columns; four folding wings depict scenes from the Infancy of Christ and close to cover the front and sides of the central panel.Footnote 20 Four standard scenes are shown: the Annunciation, Nativity, Adoring Magi, and Presentation. The Visitation is frequently included. The central image, with Mary’s upward-turned right hand pinching a rose blossom and deep V-fold drapery arranged across her lap, is a variant of Marian figuration that emerged at the beginning of the last third of the thirteenth century.Footnote 21 Style and iconography indicate that the polyptych likely dates to the 1280s, early in the carver’s productive life. Its astonishing similarity to a small triptych at the British Museum (1856,0623.54) (Figure 6.4), which extends to the polylobed leaf motif at the apex of the central panel, strongly supports their attribution to the same time, place, and hand.
Figure 6.3 Hermitage tabernacle with Infancy scenes. Paris, 1280s. Ivory, 16.3 × 16.2 (open). Hermitage, Ф 1508.
Figure 6.4 Glorification of the Virgin and Infancy triptych. Paris, 1280s. Ivory, metal (modern hinges and clasp), 11.2 × 10 cm (open). BM, 1856,0623.54.
Over time, the carver of the Saint-Sulpice triptych changed the central Virgin and Child to follow contemporary trends, whereas the Infancy scenes on the wings remained remarkably stable. For example, a polyptych of almost identical proportions in Berlin depicts a standing Virgin and Child with attributes found in works of circa 1300 (SMBK, inv. 627) (Figure 6.5).Footnote 22 Mary stands in a gently swaying contrapposto, her elegant, downward-sloping hand grasping the stem of a (now lost) flower. She pulls her heavy mantle across her body in a marked diagonal sweep. The monumental stone Virgins of Écouis and Mainneville, both of which can be dated to between 1311 and 1315, have previously served as touchstones for this type, but the style can be found on monuments dated earlier as well.Footnote 23 The limestone Vierge de Coulommiers is wrapped with the same diagonal swath of drapery across her body, and she dates to the 1285 foundation of the Hôtel-Dieu of Coulommiers or the 1290 foundation of its chapel by Queen Jeanne of Navarre and her husband, King Philippe le Bel (Figure 6.6).Footnote 24 Similarly elegant, swaying female forms with obliquely draped mantles appear in the courtly manuscripts once ascribed to Master Honoré (fl. 1288–1300). While experts are now skeptical about whether the assembled manuscripts are truly by the well-documented illuminator, many of the codices are securely dated in the 1290s.Footnote 25 The Somme le roi made for Philippe le Bel before 1295,Footnote 26 now divided between London (BL, MS Add. 54180) and Cambridge (Fitzwilliam Museum, MSS 192 and 368), contains a series of personifications of the Virtues and Vices, including elegantly dressed courtly women readily compared with the ivory Virgins. Sobriety, with elongated hands, stands in a smooth S-curve with her mantle draped transversally across her upper body and falling in an undulating hem (Figure 6.7). Such features compare most closely with the standing Virgin on the Berlin polyptych, suggesting a date around 1300, and may further indicate the tastes of the royal court. The triptychs from Saint-Sulpice and Angers feature a very similar standing Virgin and Child (Figure 6.8), and historical circumstances explored later in this chapter anchor the former in the same social milieu. In sum, the core output from the workbench of the Saint-Sulpice triptych carver consisted of standard Marian polyptychs that spanned a period of twenty to thirty years.
Figure 6.5 Berlin polyptych with Infancy scenes. Paris, 1295–1305. Ivory with modern hinges, 16.8 × 15.1 cm (open). SMBK, inv. 627.
Figure 6.6 Vierge de Coulommiers. Île-de-France, 1285–90. Limestone, 80 cm. Coulommiers (Seine-et-Marne), Musée des Capucins, MMC 1404432.
Figure 6.7 Sobriety versus Gluttony, and Lazarus and Dives, in Maître Honoré, Somme le Roi. Paris, 1290–5. London, British Library, Add. MS 54180, fol. 188v.
Figure 6.8 Comparison of the Virgin and Child from the Berlin polyptych (Figure 6.5), the Saint-Sulpice triptych (Figure 6.1), and the Angers triptych (Figure 6.15).
Although the Saint-Sulpice yvoirier enthusiastically embraced Marian tabernacles, the polyptych format was known from at least the 1250s, notably through the fragments from Zwettl, dated before 1258 (Figure 1.7). In these early works the standardized iconography of the central Virgin and Child with framing Infancy scenes was already well established.Footnote 27 The rare survival of the mixed-media tabernacle in Trani, likely from before 1277 (Figure 1.6), reminds us of the fragile nature of the multimedia frames around such objects; such composite works have survived at a lower rate than their solid ivory counterparts.Footnote 28
The carver of the Saint-Sulpice triptych did not profit from the wide popularity of Marian polyptychs by making scores of such objects himself. Rather, I would argue that even though he refined a very popular object type, the number of polyptychs so close to his work is due to the fact that he contracted with other carvers in his neighbourhood to replicate his formula. Those artisans did not necessarily apprentice or train with him. If we compare the Berlin tabernacle with one at the British Museum, we see that the two works are remarkably similar (Figures 6.5 and 6.9): same scale, same methods of construction, nearly identical iconography, strikingly similar architectural ornamentation, and comparable traces of original polychromy. Yet close examination of the fine rendering of the faces bars us from concluding that they were carved by the same hand (Figure 6.10). Differing face shapes – square on the British Museum tabernacle, with noses rounded in contrast to the pointed ones used by the Saint-Sulpice yvoirier – suggest a relationship more distant than master–apprentice but closer than that of a later, disconnected follower. Along with many other works described by Koechlin in the tabernacle group, the British Museum polyptych leads me to conclude that the relationship between the Saint-Sulpice carver and the artisans who crafted these works was one of “putting out”: local carvers from around La Tabletterie were charged with emulating the successful prototype of the yvoirier-tabletier, carving the tabletier’s own stock of material into works to be sold at his or her storefront.Footnote 29 Other tabernacles illustrate a similar relationship.Footnote 30 Such a social contract explains what has heretofore been seen as a disconcerting combination of similarity and difference in the corpus of Gothic ivories from around 1300.
Figure 6.9 Marian polyptych. Paris, 1275–1300. Ivory, 18 × 12 cm (open). BM, 1923,1205.4.
Figure 6.10 Comparison of the Virgin from the Berlin polyptych (Figure 6.5) and the British Museum polyptych (Figure 6.9).
Fit for a King: Bespoke Ivories
While the master carver responsible for the Saint-Sulpice triptych produced tabernacles himself, he also commissioned other carvers to follow his successful formula. On those occasions when a client stopped by his shop to request a devotional item tailored to his or her specific needs and resources, it seems likely that the Saint-Sulpice carver undertook the work himself. It is worth examining as “bespoke” products two diptychs whose iconographies differ from the master’s core repertoire. Both demonstrate flexibility and responsiveness to unique requests in terms of subjects and size (and its correlate, price). Even though they were clearly created for both ends of the market, the two works have identical figural styles, patterns of polychromy, and highly polished finishes, and, as a result, they provide insight into the qualities that elevated the reputation of this master yvoirier.
The first item is a petite ivory diptych at the Victoria and Albert Museum (4-1872) (Figure 6.11), only 6.2 cm high in a silver frame.Footnote 31 Each leaf is a mere 3.1 cm wide and 0.5 cm thick. Nothing is known of the diptych’s provenance prior to its purchase from the London dealer John Webb in 1872. Its style is perfectly consonant with the group of ivories associated with the Saint-Sulpice triptych, although the unusually small size stands out. The scale may be due to its purchaser’s restrained resources or to a desire for maximum portability. Two iconographic features suggest that an individual had this item made to order.
Figure 6.11 Diptych with Virgin and Child and Saint Catherine. Paris, 1285–95. Ivory and silver frame (later), 6.2 × 6.9 cm (open). VAM, 4-1872.
Kneeling before a seated and crowned Virgin and Child on the left wing is a beardless young man, hair cut in a stylish bob with bangs. He wears a gardecorps, or overcoat, in a fashion typical of the second half of the thirteenth century, with the sleeves hanging loose at the shoulders. The Christ Child blesses the youth with his right hand. The young man is clearly meant to represent the owner/user of the diptych, shown in the midst of his devotions. On the right wing a crowned female figure has a much more active stance: she tramples a crowned man with her knees, thrusting a sword into his neck. Glyn Davies identified this as Saint Catherine vanquishing her persecutor, Emperor Maxentius.Footnote 32 Catherine’s reputation as an erudite theological debater, underlined by the book in her hand, was emphasized in the popular form of her vita circulated in the Golden Legend (ca. 1260). This made her the ideal patron saint for the theologians and jurists of the growing University of Paris.Footnote 33 Davies noted that a young man with disposable income from another profession with which Saint Catherine was associated might be represented on the ivory, but the nexus of ties between the patron saint, the dapper youth, the university, the object’s small size (and thus reasonable price), and a clearly Parisian style suggest that a young master of the local university obtained a fashionable devotional aid. We might also recall that the university’s chancellor, Eudes de Châteauroux, donated an ivory in 1273 to the abbey of Sainte-Geneviève, closely associated with the university (discussed in Chapter 3). The Bolognese lawyer Odofredo Denari (d. 1265) recounted an anecdote in which a father despairs of his son, then studying in Paris, for spending princely sums on illuminated manuscripts.Footnote 34 In the last decade of the thirteenth century, Gothic ivories may have been similarly tempting for a fashionable young man studying in Paris, and the Saint-Sulpice carver was able to capture the youth’s spiritual and social aspirations.
Another diptych, on a much larger scale, can also be considered a “bespoke” item made by the Saint-Sulpice carver. Now at the Cloisters, the diptych is composed of two thick (1.9 cm) panels, each measuring 12.7 cm in height and 6.5 cm in breadth (1970.324.7) (Figure 6.12).Footnote 35 In terms of raw material, this represents fourteen times more dentine than the Saint Catherine diptych, and given that weight is commensurate with expense, the material alone indicates a buyer with significant means. The figures on the Cloisters diptych are almost detached from their background, with many components completely undercut (the ladder and the instruments of the Passion, for example). Such ambitious and technically challenging sculpture brings remarkable drama and vivacity to the diptych. In terms of its high relief and the monumentality of its figures, the Cloisters diptych is comparable to the Death of the Virgin triptych in the Wyvern Collection (Figure 4.36), the single surviving panel from another similar triptych at the Victoria and Albert Museum (A.5–1941), and the Saint-Sulpice triptych itself (Figure 6.1).Footnote 36 The Cloisters diptych must have been produced by the carver around 1290 (Figure 6.13).Footnote 37
Figure 6.12 Diptych with the Coronation of the Virgin and Last Judgment. Paris, 1285–95. Ivory, silver hinges, 12.7 × 6.5 cm. MMA-Cloisters, 1970.324.7.
Figure 6.13 Comparison of the seated Virgin from the Gulbenkian triptych (Figure 4.32), the diptych with Saint Catherine (Figure 6.11), and the Cloisters diptych (Figure 6.12).
The diptych pairs two scenes that are typical of sculptural programs on cathedral façades but rarely seen together in the corpus of Gothic ivories.Footnote 38 On the left panel, the Coronation of the Virgin is very similar to the composition on the Gulbenkian triptych (Figure 4.32). The scene occupies a trilobed lower register showing the saved souls ascending into heaven with the help of angels and a ladder. On the right panel Christ sits in judgment flanked by a crowned, kneeling Mary and John the Evangelist, who petition the stern Lord for mercy on behalf of humankind. Two half-length angels who emerge from the background proffer the instruments of the Passion, tools of the suffering inflicted on Christ’s flesh by humankind. In the trilobed lower register, shrouded bodies emerge from their graves while demons under an arch toss sinners headfirst into a voracious Hellmouth. In the spandrels above the framing arches on both panels, censing angels swing thuribles in low relief.
The four privileged figures who ascend into heaven on the left panel have elicited the most attention. The man at the foot of the ladder, being led upward by an angel, is dressed in a plain belted habit with a hood, his head tonsured according to the monastic rule of humility. Although he has been identified as a monk or a member of one of the new mendicant orders, possibly a Franciscan,Footnote 39 he lacks a corded belt and any identifying polychromy.Footnote 40 Closely following the tonsured figure, elevated upon a hillock and addressed directly by an angel emerging from the clouds, a crowned layman wears a loose ankle-length surcote. Behind him stands a prelate wearing a chasuble and the conical thirteenth-century papal tiara, originally painted bright red. Last in line is a second secular prince, dressed much like the central figure. These distinctively garbed figures contrast with those on the facing panel: none of the figures emerging from their graves or descending into the Hellmouth is individualized.
The iconography of the Cloisters diptych is very unusual in the corpus of Gothic ivories, so we may surmise that it was requested specifically by the commissioner.Footnote 41 It is anomalous in that it does not bookend salvation history; the most common iconographic pairings on diptychs juxtapose an Incarnation scene (Virgin and Child, Adoration of the Magi, or Nativity) with the Crucifixion or, less frequently, the Last Judgment. These pairs unite the decisive entry of God into human history with the salvific end of the story, either the ratifying sacrifice on the cross or the final arbitration. The individual who commissioned the Cloisters diptych thus chose an unusual devotional focus, one concerned less with soteriology than with eschatology.Footnote 42
The portals of the upper and lower chapels at the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris (1248) were badly damaged in 1793 during the French Revolution, and both tympana were completely restored in the nineteenth century.Footnote 43 Scholars now agree that the current program of both portals replicates the thirteenth-century originals.Footnote 44 The upper portal, the entrance into a royal chapel housing the relics of the Passion, depicts the Last Judgment with Christ flanked by angels holding the Instruments of the Passion (Figure 6.14); the lower chapel, dedicated to Mary, has an image of the Coronation of the Virgin. Therefore, the Sainte-Chapelle portals have the same iconography as the Cloisters ivory diptych, also in two parts (unlike the three-part horizontal program on the west façades of cathedrals). This seems worthy of note, given the uniqueness of each work in its respective corpus.Footnote 45
Figure 6.14 Tympanum and lintel of upper portal with the Last Judgment. Paris, Sainte-Chapelle, nineteenth century, after mid-thirteenth-century original destroyed in the Revolution.
Might the individual who commissioned the diptych (or on whose behalf it was commissioned) be pictured among the elect? I would suggest that he was not the monastic or mendicant, as Henk van Os proposed, but rather the second individual in line for Paradise, a crowned prince. It is he who is centred in the composition, elevated on the hillock, and welcomed by an angel. The iconography points toward a monarch with religious beliefs focused on events at the end of salvation history, someone who humbly follows in the footsteps of his spiritual guide and to whom the program at the Sainte-Chapelle may have held special significance.Footnote 46 One is tempted to think of the male line of the Capetian royal family, an identification that may be reinforced by the younger prince who stands behind the pope. If this is correct, then the carver of the Saint-Sulpice triptych produced works for the highest echelons of French society, including the royal household itself.
Material Ambitions: The Parisian Constructed Technique
The magnificent triptych from Saint-Sulpice is a true masterpiece of ivory carving (Figure 6.1). Koechlin regarded it as among the best pieces of the Marian tabernacle atelier, and among the triptychs “le seul chef d’oeuvre.”Footnote 47 Gaborit-Chopin made it the paragon of her eponymous Master of the Saint-Sulpice triptych group.Footnote 48 Scholars have long noted the close analogies between the Virgin and Child on the Saint-Sulpice triptych and on a triptych now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Angers (MTC 1135) (Figure 6.15), donated by Lancelot-Théodore Turpin de Crissé (1782–1859).Footnote 49 The figure of Mary on the petite Berlin tabernacle also shares all the same characteristics (Figure 6.8). Beyond these stylistic similarities, a number of unusual aspects of facture on the Saint-Sulpice and Angers triptychs help us recognize how this yvoirier was an artisan who pushed the inherent capacities or affordances of his chosen medium. He was a proficient technician, perhaps even a tabletier mastering an extended range of skills typical of that métier, as discussed in Chapter 1. A third triptych of the same scale and quality is at the Bibliothèque municipale in Amiens (Esc. 6) (Figure 6.16), bequeathed to that city with an immense collection of books by Marie Joseph Charles de l’Escalopier (1812–61).Footnote 50 With its deep and fine carving, remarkably preserved polychromy, lively minuscule narrative, and soft, expressive style, the Amiens triptych is also a masterpiece by the Saint-Sulpice carver. The technical dexterity visible in the assembly of the panels of the Saint-Sulpice and Angers triptychs is extended to figural sculpture in the Amiens work, fully revealing the imagination and skill of this yvoirier.
Figure 6.15 Angers Glorification of the Virgin triptych. Paris, 1295–1305. Ivory with metal hinges (replaced), 33.3 × 25 cm (open). Angers, Musée des Beaux-Arts, MTC 1135.
Figure 6.16 Amiens Death of the Virgin triptych. Paris, 1295–1305. Ivory with original silver hinges and clasps, 27.5 × 25.5 cm (open). Amiens, Bibliothèque métropole, Esc. 6.
The remarkably large and deep central panel (32 × 14.2 × 4 cm) of the Saint-Sulpice triptych is one of the largest pieces of solid ivory deployed for low-relief sculpture in the Gothic ivory corpus (Figure 6.1). Yet the enormity of this panel was not sufficient for the ambitions of the carver: the reverse shows how more ivory was added to the outer edges to square the panel and “correct” the awkward arc of the tusk (Figure 6.17). The pieces were attached via ivory dowels and glue to create a rectangular object from an irregularly curved one. Along the left edge of the triptych this inset has been restored, but the original sickle-shaped addition to the panel’s right edge is extant.Footnote 51 The right wing also has an original extension (Figure 6.18). This leads to several observations. First, the artisan crafting this work planned for such additions or accommodations when he first cut the massive panel from the tusk cylinder; second, his ambitions for the tusk exceeded its already massive girth; and third, the artisan had no qualms about “cobbling” together a finished product, even though this entailed a risk to its future stability. Precious documentary evidence allows us to anchor these observations in their historical context, but considering the facture of other closely related objects will help us obtain a more complete understanding of the Saint-Sulpice yvoirier’s constructed technique.
Figure 6.17 Back of Saint-Sulpice triptych (Figure 6.1).
Figure 6.18 Front of Saint-Sulpice triptych, closed (Figure 6.1).
The three panels of the triptych in Angers are assembled in the same manner (Figure 6.15), which supports its long-recognized stylistic connection with the Saint-Sulpice triptych. The reverse reveals two insets along the back edges of the thick central panel (12.2 cm wide, max. 3 cm thick), secured with glue and ivory dowels visible on the front of the panel (Figure 6.19). Sections of ivory are also glued onto the back edges of the wings, and a wedge was inserted to make the central panel perpendicular and offset the curvature of the tusk. The central panel is thick, but not rectangular: 3 cm deep at the bottom and just 2 cm at the top, the tapering form suggests that it was cut this way to avoid the nerve cavity and maximize the visual impact of the large tusk. As with the Saint-Sulpice triptych, such decisions were made when the tusk was first sawed, suggesting that the carver was also responsible for the initial decisions regarding the apportioning of the tusk. The artisan thus made liberal use of the constructed technique to assemble a triptych of astonishingly large size, maximizing the potential of an already impressively sized tusk.
The Angers triptych still stands on its original base of ivory-faced wood, once adorned with a faux-enamel motif rendered in translucent glazes on a gold ground (only traces remain).Footnote 52 A number of other works from the Saint-Sulpice group have similar bases, although some are heavily altered or restored.Footnote 53 These bases demonstrate a more mundane aspect of the constructed technique, but securely gluing thin ivory veneers onto a wooden core still requires a range of technical proficiencies. Such additive techniques are not limited to structural functions; they also offer a glimpse of the carver’s sculptural ambitions. Notably, the tall, slim candles held by the flanking angels are glued in place, and they seem to be original (Figure 6.15).Footnote 54 The Virgin’s elongated right hand holds not a flower, but a hollow cylinder; an inserted blossom was planned from the beginning, either of ivory or another precious material.Footnote 55 That is not to say that the carver shied away from challenges requiring great dexterity, for the delicate colonnettes on either side of the Virgin and Child are integral to the central volume and not glued in. Such precarious passages of sculptural flair reveal the carver’s virtuosity.
The central panel of a fragmentary triptych in the Wallace Collection, London, showing Christ crucified between the two thieves, reveals the constructed technique most clearly because all the original attachments are lost (S247) (Figure 6.20).Footnote 56 Masterfully cut in deep relief (D 2.5 cm), the tortured bodies of the three men are almost fully undercut, and the necessary depth was created with the constructed technique. A sizeable quantity of cementum, preserved along the vertical edges of the panel, visibly follows the natural curvature of the tusk (Figure 6.21). Dowel holes and cross-hatching along the cementum edges indicate the original presence of ivory insets. A tracery pattern of two cusped arches crowned with a quatrefoil is still visible as an offset, suggesting either polychromy or a micro-architectural frame, perhaps of silver or silver gilt. The Wallace panel perhaps provides evidence that the Saint-Sulpice carver recognized the risks and dangers in his boundary-pushing technique and began to experiment with ways to stabilize his products.
Figure 6.20 Central panel of a Crucifixion triptych. Paris, 1295–1305. Ivory, H 26.6, W 13.4 cm. London, Wallace Collection, S247.
Figure 6.21 Back of Wallace Crucifixion panel (Figure 6.20).
In contrast to the monumental figures on the Saint-Sulpice, Angers, and Wallace Collection ivories, a triptych in Amiens depicts an energetic miniature narrative of the Death and Coronation of the Virgin that is very close to that on the Wyvern triptych discussed in Chapter 4 (Figure 6.16; compare Figure 4.36). Different figural scales have obscured the deep similarities shared by the Amiens triptych and the one in Angers in particular, seen most readily in the ivy-leaf crockets on the gables. They are rendered in an identical manner, at an identical scale, and with identical moulding, which argues strongly for their production by the same individual (Figures 6.15 and 6.16). Unlike the Angers and Wallace triptychs, however, the Amiens triptych is composed of three well-matched, nearly flawless panels, taken from adjacent “slices” of elephant tusk (Figure 6.22). The dentine is remarkably uniform in texture, and there is a little cementum on the hinged edges of the central panel and wings, a choice likely made for stability. The arching grain on its reverse indicates that these thick panels were not taken from the central diameter of the tusk; they were cut slightly off-centre.Footnote 57 The central panel measures 12.7 cm in width, so the full diameter of the tusk cylinder well above the nerve cavity was even greater. Towers integral to the central plaque flank the gable, whose apex was originally a separately carved piece of ivory secured with glue and a dowel, as evidenced by cross-hatched lines and two holes. This is the sole evidence of the constructed technique on the panels of the Amiens triptych.
Figure 6.22 Back of Amiens Death of the Virgin triptych (Figure 6.16).
On this ivory the Saint-Sulpice carver deployed the tools of dowel and glue to push the limits of the medium, not to increase panel size but rather to enhance his virtuosic carving technique. The additive approach was applied to figural sculpture, where such assemblages were neither necessary nor typical, but which our carver nevertheless used to augment the effects achievable by chisel alone. The angels of the Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin on the Amiens triptych have now lost their wings (Figure 6.23). This is not because of intentional damage but rather because those appendages were separately carved and glued into holes (circular, oval, and rectangular) – an ingenious solution to the difficult task of carving repetitive and risky patterns in high relief. In this way the wings did not interfere with the figural carving and the artisan could achieve a greater sense of texture and depth. The central register depicting the reception of the Virgin into heaven multiplied the application of this technique to benefit the iconography: the choir of angels who acclaim the Virgin’s arrival not only strum their instruments but also seem to beat their manifold delicate wings in welcome.
Figure 6.23 Oblique view of central panel of the Amiens triptych, showing dowel holes for lost wings (Figure 6.16).
Similar strategies for maximizing the depth of ivory panels were used by the Saint-Sulpice carver for large-scale polyptychs, some of which demonstrate a technological evolution that suggests the artisan learned from past failures. Three large Marian tabernacles reveal an evolving solution to the same problem: one in the Thomson Collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario (inv. 107356) (Figure 6.24),Footnote 58 one from the Humann Collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum (Figure 5.12),Footnote 59 and another at the Louvre (OA 2587) (Figure 6.25).Footnote 60 John Lowden called attention to the reverse of the AGO polyptych, where the lower corners of the central panel and the inner corners of the first set of narrow wings follow the natural curvature of the tusk, and are all cross-hatched to aid the adhesion of extra pieces of ivory (Figure 6.26).Footnote 61 Lowden deduced from this that all five panels were cut from the same section of ivory tusk, with the front and side panels (only 0.25 cm deep) sawed from the central one. The polyptychs at the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Louvre display a different solution to the problem of making a rectilinear tabernacle from a round and curved tusk while maximizing the use of dentine: the backs of their central panels are bevelled rather than flat. To maintain maximum depth in the central volume and avoid glued-in additions on the back corners, the semicircular block hewn from the tusk cylinder is cut into a pentagon rather than a rectangle (Figure 6.26). A significant quantity of cementum is visible along the back ridge and back corners, showing that the artisan maximized depth without the need for insets.Footnote 62 Moreover, the depths of the central panels of these two polyptychs are approximately half their respective breadths, meaning that each polyptych represents approximately half of a tusk cylinder. The extant corpus of ivories does not allow us to push this observation further, but the other half of the enormous tusks used for each of these polyptychs might have been used for a second tabernacle of equally impressive dimensions.
Figure 6.24 Marian polyptych with Infancy scenes. Paris, 1285–95. Ivory with silver hinges, 24.3 × 21 × 4.5 cm (open). AGO-Thomson, inv. 107356.
Figure 6.25 Marian polyptych with Infancy scenes. Paris, ca. 1310. Ivory, 28.2 × 23.5 × 5 cm (open). Louvre, OA 2587.
Figure 6.26 Diagram of how tabernacles are cut from the tusk cylinder.
We can compare the Louvre tabernacle with a Virgin and Child in the Hermitage Museum with no known provenance before it was acquired by Count Basilewsky between 1865 and 1867 (Ф 36) (Figure 6.27).Footnote 63 The reverse of this object shows significant alteration: what now appears to be a throne was once the background of a thick triptych or polyptych that was cut down (Figure 6.28). The bevelled back likens this work to tabernacles with a pentagonal profile (Figure 6.26). Unusually, the energetically wriggling Christ Child on both the Louvre and Hermitage pieces is bare-chested, with notably modelled pectorals and biceps, an iconographic feature dated to the first decades of the fourteenth century that is also found on the massive diptych now split between the Louvre (OA 11097) and the Toledo Museum of Art (50.301) (Figure 6.29).Footnote 64 Pairing this iconographic motif with the innovative panel construction suggests that the Saint-Sulpice carver adopted the pentagonal solution for large and deep panels later in his career, perhaps after decades of experience showed that the glued-in sections weakened the handiwork over time and threatened his enterprise’s reputation.
Figure 6.27 Seated Virgin and Child, fragment of a tabernacle (?). Paris, ca. 1310. Ivory with modern crown, 22.5 cm. Hermitage, Ф 36.
Figure 6.28 Back of Hermitage seated Virgin and Child (Figure 6.27).
Figure 6.29 Diptych with the Glorification of the Virgin and Crucifixion. Paris, ca. 1310. Ivory, each panel ca. 24 × 12.5 × 1.5 cm. Left: Louvre, OA 11097;
As I have shown, the carver of the Saint-Sulpice triptych was plainly pushing the representational capacities of ivory. In creating explicitly constructed objects, the artisan relied not solely on the subtractive actions of chisel and gouge but also thought and created with dowel and glue.Footnote 65 Agglutination is a key characteristic of this leading Parisian ivory carver’s production: the constructed approach was applied to both structural elements and figuration. The carver mastered the skills typical of a tabletier rather than an ymagier, and his artistic imagination extended beyond the physical limits of the tusk. Suppressing the natural tendencies of the tusk through artisanal techniques recalls the aesthetic tension between nature and artifice articulated in the Roman de la Rose. As I suggested in Chapter 1, the additive or constructed techniques used in so many Parisian Gothic ivories derived from the workshops of échéquiers-tabletiers, not those of monumental sculptors. Both consequences of the constructed technique – surpassing the maximum girth of the large ivory tusk and enhancing the miniature carving – amplify the prized natural affordances of the large-scale savannah tusk, its size and its ability to accept finely carved detail. By means of the apparently humble techniques of dowel and glue, the carver of the Saint-Sulpice triptych achieved his most virtuosic effects. Attending to facture reveals an extremely talented carver who pushed material limits and overcame nature with artifice.
A Cutting Plan: The Tabletier’s Statuettes
In addition to the diptychs, triptychs, and tabernacles examined thus far, we can attribute some of the most exquisite and renowned Gothic ivory statuettes to the carver who made the Saint-Sulpice triptych (Figure 6.30).Footnote 66 These statuettes share aspects of style and facture with the triptychs and tabernacles. Their innovative shapes betray the hand of a cunning and talented craftsperson who made artistic and economic decisions about how to maximize the quantity of ivory from large-scale tusks and how to manipulate the awkward shape to achieve the best results. As a result, the oeuvre of the Saint-Sulpice carver contrasts strongly with the tentative outcomes achieved by the earliest carvers of Gothic ivory statuettes explored in Chapter 2. Furthermore, like the bespoke diptychs already discussed, these statuettes differed in size and therefore in price. An examination of the largest and most expensive of these allows us to compare the extraordinary talent of the Saint-Sulpice carver with that of a close peer. The two artists share so many similarities that they appear to have worked in a master–apprentice relationship.
Figure 6.30 Comparison of Tournai Virgin (Figure 6.33), Angers triptych (Figure 6.15), Rattier Virgin (Figure 6.36), Humann Virgin (Figure 6.31), Assisi Virgin (Figure 6.38), and Wernher Virgin (Figure 6.40), here attributed to the carver of the Saint-Sulpice triptych.
The Virgin and Child formerly in the Humann Collection, Paris, is often noted for its large size (VAM 4685–1858) (Figure 6.31).Footnote 67 At more than 40 cm tall, it is commensurate in scale with the artist’s Saint-Sulpice triptych.Footnote 68 While the size of the tusk used for the figures was clearly impressive, the side view reveals a marked difference from the majority of statuettes at this scale: this Virgin and Child were cut from an enormous savannah elephant tusk that was sawed in half lengthwise (Figure 6.32). Like the tabernacles, the depth of the statuette is just over half its width. The back is rounded, following the circumference of the tusk, with significant remains of cementum. The front is very flat, although the carver has masterfully disguised this with energetic carving incised into the tusk’s best-quality dentine. The Virgin’s right hand, which held a flower, is completely cut away from the drapery around her knee, and Christ’s chubby right arm extends away from Mary’s breast. Such dexterity shows the savvy tabletier at work, dividing a large tusk to maximize the number of objects made from it and using his skill to explore fragile undercuts and sculptural flourishes.
Figure 6.31 Humann Virgin and Child. Paris, 1295–1305. Ivory, 40.5 × 13.2 × 7 cm (with base). VAM, 4685-1858.
Figure 6.32 Side view of the Humann Virgin and Child (Figure 6.31).
A less well-known statuette by the Saint-Sulpice carver is now part of the treasury of the cathedral of Notre-Dame in Tournai (09 IVO 01) (Figure 6.33).Footnote 69 It was cut like the preceding Virgin and Child, except that here only a quarter of the tusk was used. An overhead view shows that while the back of the statuette is rounded, the block of ivory is pie-shaped (Figures 6.34 and 6.35). The figures were sculpted in two nearly perpendicular planes whose apex forms the Virgin’s protruding hand and toes. All the gestures, even the now-broken arm of the Christ Child, cleverly adhered to the confines of this unusual shape.
Figure 6.33 Tournai Virgin and Child. Paris, 1285–95. Ivory, 23 cm. Tournai, treasury of the cathedral of Notre-Dame, 09 IVO 01.
Figure 6.35 Diagram of how statuettes are cut from the tusk.
The exquisite Rattier Virgin (VAM 200-1867) (Figure 6.36), owned before 1848 by M. Sommeson in Paris and then in the Rattier Collection before entering the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1859, masks even more cunningly how it was extracted from the tusk.Footnote 70 Like the Humann Virgin, the back of the statuette traces the circumference of the tusk, although little cementum is visible.Footnote 71 Likewise, while the front face of the statuette is a flat plane, the back retains both the roundness and natural arc of the tusk (Figures 6.35 and 6.37). The result is a statuette significantly thicker at the base than the head, comparable to the tapered central panel of the Angers triptych (Figure 6.15). Traces of proximity to the nerve canal can be seen on the Virgin’s salient knee. Like the Tournai Virgin, the Rattier statuette has two sculptural “faces,” the flat front of the statuette and the side behind Christ’s back, making it a very successful work in the round. In a very clever way the Saint-Sulpice carver has taken advantage of the best dentine in the tusk.
Figure 6.36 Rattier Virgin and Child. Paris, 1285–95. Ivory, 20.1 × 9.2 × 7.3 cm. VAM, 200-1867.
Figure 6.37 Side view of the Rattier Virgin and Child (Figure 6.36).
A Virgin and Child statuette in the treasury of the basilica of San Francesco, Assisi, preserves its original base and most of its original polychromy (inv. 70) (Figure 6.38).Footnote 72 A 1370 inventory of the church sacristy described the statuette as “Item, another image of the Blessed Virgin with her son in arms of ivory: beautiful enough (satis pulchra).”Footnote 73 The ivory was not listed in the 1360–61 copy of the 1338 sacristy inventory, a text which included works added to the collection between 1338 and 1360 without distinction, indicating that the ivory arrived after 1361 or that it was kept elsewhere before that date.Footnote 74 The statuette is a wide arc segment of ivory, with a gently rounded back covered with abundant cementum especially along the projecting parts of the throne (Figure 6.39). Unlike the Humann Virgin (Figure 6.32), the front face is slightly convex, not flat, which suggests that this piece of ivory was taken from around the nerve cavity and not from the material from which flat panels may be cut (Figure 6.35). The Saint-Sulpice tabletier thus used parts of the tusk unsuitable for panel-making to create an audacious sculpture, choosing a unique Marian iconography for this oddly shaped piece of ivory: a toddler Christ standing on his mother’s knee, wearing a long mantle or cope clasped at the neck and pulling his garment outward as he leans away from his mother. The thinness of that garment is remarkable and it is echoed on the opposite side of the statuette where Mary’s mantle, tossed over her left shoulder, similarly tapers to an exceptional thinness. It is clear that the artisan specifically chose this unusual composition to suit the piece of dentine before him, and that he produced such an exquisite work from what others would consider undesirable parts of the ivory tusk is all the more noteworthy.
Figure 6.38 Assisi Virgin and Child. Paris, 1295–1305. Ivory, 20 × 15.2 cm (without base). Assisi, Museo del Tesoro della Basilica di San Francesco, inv. 70.
Figure 6.39 Side view of the Assisi Virgin and Child (Figure 6.38).
Another work attributable to the Saint-Sulpice carver,Footnote 75 the largest of the freestanding Virgin and Child statuettes, comes from the London collection of Sir Julius Wernher (1850–1912) and is today in the British Museum (accession number: 1978.0502.3) (Figure 6.40).Footnote 76 At more than 33 cm tall and nearly 12 cm in diameter, the Wernher statuette was a large and important commission. The extensive traces of polychromy are entirely consistent with the artist’s other works, as is the fact that the statuette is currently kept upright with a wedge of ivory.Footnote 77 Even though the wedge obscures the base of the statuette, the tall ivory cylinder was very likely taken from the solid distal end of a large tusk. It has a marked curvature, with Mary leaning precariously to the left (Figure 6.35). The carver’s typical constructed technique is apparent in the well-preserved hollow ivory vial in the Virgin’s right hand, meant to hold a flower in another material (Figure 6.41). The bench is elaborately carved with a rosette border and expertly rendered blind trefoil tracery, and the Virgin sits upon a plush polychromed cushion.Footnote 78 The fact that the work is carved from the full circumference of a tusk and not from a smaller piece places the Wernher Virgin and Child among the most prestigious and expensive objects created by the carver of the Saint-Sulpice triptych.
Figure 6.40 Wernher Virgin and Child. Paris, 1295–1305. Ivory, 33.2 × 11.8 cm. BM, 1978,0502.3.
The Wernher statuette has been compared to two vaunted Gothic ivory images of the Virgin and Child. One is from the collegial church of Notre-Dame of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon (Figure 6.42), the new quarter of Avignon established by Philippe le Bel in 1292. Patronage by Cardinal Arnaud de Via (d. 1335) not only remains unsubstantiated but should not be taken into account when dating the work.Footnote 79 The other statuette is the so-called Frigolet Virgin and Child, now in a private collection, but before the Revolution apparently at the Premonstratensian abbey of Saint-Michel de Frigolet, 20 km from Avignon (Figure 6.43).Footnote 80 Although recent scholarship has placed these two works sometimes as much as fifty years apart, their facture, style (despite restorations on the Frigolet Virgin), similar architectural decoration on their benches,Footnote 81 and polychromy indicate that both were made by the same artisan in the last decade of the thirteenth century.Footnote 82
Figure 6.42 Villeneuve-lès-Avignon Virgin and Child. Paris, late 1280s–95. Ivory, 45 × 15.3 × 13.2 cm. Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, Musée Pierre de Luxembourg, PL 86.3.1.
Figure 6.43 So-called Frigolet Virgin and Child. Paris, late 1280s–95. Ivory, 36.5 × 13.3 × 12.2 cm. Toronto, Private collection.
Despite a number of salient similarities, including identical polychromy patterns on all three of the Virgin’s cushions, the Villeneuve-lès-Avignon and Frigolet ivories were not executed by the carver of the Saint-Sulpice triptych, even if they existed in close proximity and were clearly in dialogue. I conclude that they were carved by a very close associate of the Saint-Sulpice carver. The combination of similarities and differences differs from that of the polyptychs discussed earlier, for which a system of “putting out” seems to have been used. Rather I suspect that the ties that would have engendered such stylistic and technical similarities between two individual carvers are akin to those of a master and apprentice, perhaps even a father and son.Footnote 83
Nothing is known of the provenance of the Wernher Virgin and Child before it appeared in Sir Julius’s collection, but when it was hewn at the turn of the fourteenth century it must have been destined for one of the most discerning patrons in western Europe. We might recall the expensive ivory Virgin and Child statuette on a silver base that countess Mahaut d’Artois bought from the estate of the widowed French queen Marie of Brabant (1260–1321; r. 1274–85), purchased second-hand for the substantial sum of 30 livres.Footnote 84 Such a work would surely have resembled the Wernher Virgin and Child in size, quality, and style. The rich and compelling object biography of the Saint-Sulpice triptych, which we are about to explore, confirms that works by the carver of the Saint-Sulpice triptych were prized by princes of the church and court, and even yields insights into their aesthetic appreciation for these works.
The Saint-Sulpice Triptych, the Papal See, and Technologies of Salvation
The triptych from Saint-Sulpice is one of the best-known Gothic ivories, and its history is now one of the best documented (Figure 6.1). In the nineteenth century it was kept in the parish church of the bastide town of Saint-Sulpice-sur-Tarn, about 35 km northeast of Toulouse (Languedoc).Footnote 85 It came to national attention when it travelled to Paris for the 1889 Exposition rétrospective, after which Alfred Darcel initiated the process of its acquisition for the Musée Cluny.Footnote 86 Darcel’s successor, Edmond Saglio, obtained confirmation from the church at Saint-Sulpice that the triptych had been in its care since well before the Revolution. A procès verbal (dictated inventory) from the 1644 visit of Monseigneur Charles de Montchal, archbishop of Toulouse, to the parish church, described the triptych in a wooden retable on a side altar: “an old retable of painted wood and in the middle of the lower portion, a part of the story of the Life and Death of Our Lord represented via figures in ivory.”Footnote 87
Based on this evidence, it has been assumed that the triptych was in the parish church for centuries. In the nineteenth century, however, local antiquarians recalled that it was transferred to the church from the chapel of the female Cistercian convent of Saint-Antoine in the aftermath of the Wars of Religion.Footnote 88 This would explain the ivory’s appearance in the 1644 procès verbal and its absence from one in 1615. The earlier document emphasized the undignified austerity of the church’s interior after a sack in 1562; the Vicar General thereafter ordered new liturgical furnishings to be made for the parish. It seems likely that this was when the ivory triptych was mounted within its wooden retable for display on the side altar.Footnote 89 A photolithograph made between 1866 and 1871 depicts the triptych still in this wooden frame (Figure 6.44), with the upper portions of the central panel and the two wings cut to their present illogical configuration (Figure 6.18).Footnote 90 This work seems to have been undertaken in the early seventeenth century to ready the triptych for display. The reason for such radical adjustments can now be tied to its original unusual disposition.
Figure 6.44 Photolithograph of the Saint-Sulpice triptych before accession to the Musée Cluny. Antoine Du Bourg, “Saint-Sulpice-de-la-Pointe: San Somplisi, Castrum Sancti Sulpitii,” Mémoires de la Société archéologique du Midi de la France 9 (1866–71): 27–42, after page 42.
Gaborit-Chopin identified the triptych from Saint-Sulpice with one in the 1311 inventory of the papal treasure in Perugia, drafted during the reign of Pope Clement V (r. 1305–14), the pontiff who moved the papal see to Avignon.Footnote 91 The detailed description reads:
Item, a beautiful tabernacle made of three panels of ivory, and in the central panel at the summit is the image of the Saviour come to judge, separated, however, from the said tabernacle, and on one side of the said panel is an image carrying the cross of wood; and on the other side another image is missing. And in the middle of the said panel is the Crucifixion with two angels overhead and four images. Beside and under the cross is the image of the holy Virgin with Child with two angels on either side, carrying candelabra with candles. And in the other panel to the right in the summit is Simon of Cyrene carrying the cross with another two images, and under them are the Magi carrying gifts. In the third panel which is to the left in the summit is the Deposition of Christ from the cross with other images, and below is the representation of the Lord in the Temple. And all images are in their own tabernacles [arches] and have for the most part gilded heads.Footnote 92
Julian Gardner remarked on the almost museological precision with which Clement V’s inventory was taken; modern catalogue descriptions are often not as precise.Footnote 93 The description precisely matches the iconography of the triptych from Saint-Sulpice in every detail except for the unusual Last Judgment scene appended to the top (“separata tamen a dicto tabernaculo”), depicting Christ, an angel carrying the wood of the cross, and a third figure already missing in 1311. Very unusually, this scene seems to have been composed of separately carved figures fastened atop the upper edge of the triptych. Although the upper portion of the Saint-Sulpice triptych has been altered, there are still two symmetrical dowel holes, approximately above Longinus and Stephaton, in the thick upper frame (Figure 6.45). This physical evidence might well substantiate the original presence of an innovative and fragile third register. The odd Last Judgment affixed along the upper edge, already damaged in the early fourteenth century, explains why the triptych was altered before insertion into the wooden frame early in the seventeenth century.
Figure 6.45 Upper edge of the Saint-Sulpice triptych, showing two dowel holes (Figure 6.1).
The craftsman of the Saint-Sulpice triptych was clearly comfortable with additive techniques, not only cobbling ivory together to construct a deep central panel or to extend a triptych’s wings but also using an innovative and risky attachment system for a freestanding Last Judgment scene. A standing Virgin and Child on the lower register of a large-scale polyptych now at the Hermitage is a close stylistic relative to those on the Saint-Sulpice and Angers triptychs and surely by the same hand (Ф 38) (Figure 6.46). Its upper register preserves a Last Judgment that might resemble the lost one that crowned the Saint-Sulpice triptych, and the trilobed groundline beneath Christ’s feet suggests a possible reconstruction of the altered upper edge of the Saint-Sulpice triptych.Footnote 94 The central seated Christ displays his wounded hands and is flanked by angels holding instruments of the Passion, with the cross and crown of thorns to the viewer’s right and the lance to the left.Footnote 95
Figure 6.46 Large polyptych with the Last Judgment, Glorification of the Virgin, and Infancy scenes. Paris, 1295–1305 (and nineteenth-century restorations). Ivory, silver hinges, 32.5 × 35.2 × 4 cm (open). Hermitage, Ф 38.
Nor was the carver limited by the natural parameters of an elephant tusk, even one of extraordinary size. The tusk used for the Saint-Sulpice triptych was enormous, more than 14 cm in diameter well above the nerve cavity. Using additive techniques, the master carver strove to surpass his materials – materiam superabat opus – and to impress elite patrons with larger-than-life works of shining white ivory. The marriage between material splendour and technical virtuosity appealed to patrons of the highest order. I am confident that the triptych from the parish church of Saint-Sulpice is the one described in the papal inventory of 1311, and I find it unsurprising this artisan’s most ambitious work was destined for a pope. The Saint-Sulpice triptych is not described in the 1295 inventory, drawn up early in the papacy of Boniface VIII (r. 1294–1303).Footnote 96 Given the precariousness of the papacy early in the reign of Clement V and in that of his short-lived predecessor Benedict XI (r. October 1303–July 1304), the triptych was almost certainly acquired during the tenure of the flamboyant Boniface VIII between 1296 and his death in 1303.Footnote 97
How the triptych journeyed from Italy to Languedoc remains a mystery. Gaborit-Chopin posited that Clement V’s successor in Avignon, Pope John XXII (r. 1316–34), born Jacques Duèze in Cahors, offered the triptych to the cathedral of Lavaur (Tarn) around 1317 when he reorganized the diocese.Footnote 98 This explanation, however, overlooks the very reason why the 1311 inventory was made. In the midst of the transfer of the papacy from Rome to Avignon, Clement V wanted the treasury to be brought to Avignon; it was then still in Perugia, where Pope Benedict XI (r. 1303–04) had it brought with much effort after the death of Boniface.Footnote 99 Between 1304 and 1311 Clement V did not have sustained access to the papal treasure. As Gardner explained, the inventory ordered in preparation for the transfer to Avignon is the last witness to the thirteenth-century popes’ magnificent collection, for the treasure never arrived in Avignon.Footnote 100 Orphaned en route in Lucca when the cardinal in charge, the Franciscan Gentile da Montefiore, died unexpectedly in 1312, the temporary repositories were sacked by the Ghibellines in 1314 and the treasure was dispersed. The reason that none of the diptychs, triptychs, and tabernacles described in Perugia in 1311 are included in the inventories compiled in Avignon at Clement V’s death in 1314 is that Clement never received his predecessors’ treasure.Footnote 101 If the triptych described in 1311 in Perugia and lost in 1314 in Lucca is indeed the one found on a side altar at Saint-Sulpice-sur-Tarn in 1644, recently transferred from the nearby Cistercian convent of Saint-Antoine, its voyage from Lucca to the banks of the Tarn remains a mystery.
The presence of the Saint-Sulpice triptych in the 1311 papal inventory provides a definitive terminus ante quem for the object’s creation, and I have argued that it likely dates to the last eight years of Boniface VIII’s reign (1296–1303). The 1295 inventory reveals that the papal court was a consumer of Gothic ivories in the thirteenth century, including the composite polyptychs discussed in Chapter 1 and a triptych similar to one now at the Victoria and Albert Museum, examined in Chapter 3.Footnote 102 Gardner surveyed other inventories of high-level Roman ecclesiastics from the last third of the thirteenth century and found a representative sampling of Gothic ivories.Footnote 103 Cardinal Eudes de Châteauroux, discussed in Chapter 3, donated an ivory Virgin and Child to the abbey of Sainte-Geneviève in Paris when he died at the papal court in Orvieto. Finally, as noted in Chapter 5, Boniface VIII bequeathed two ivories to the cathedral at Anagni upon his death, a Virgin and Child statuette and a Marian polyptych.Footnote 104 Even though none of these works are identifiable today, their presence in prelates’ collections demonstrates a widespread appreciation for ivory devotional images among the high clergy in Italy at the end of the thirteenth century as well as a concomitant trust in their efficacy as gifts.
The quantity of Gothic ivories at ecclesiastic courts in Italy poses the question of how cardinals and popes might have obtained them. Were they all carved in Paris? As we saw in Chapters 1 and 5, it was possible to buy such works while travelling in Paris or northern France, as did the abbot of Zwettl and the counts and countesses of Flanders, Hainaut, and Artois. Additionally, another option was recently brought to light: a 1306 inventory of objects purchased by Abbot Bavarus (r. 1290–1332) of the Břevnov monastery outside of Prague includes an ivory image (“imaginem eburneam”).Footnote 105 The inventory specifies that the ivory was purchased in the Roman curia (“in curia Romanam emptam”), possibly when Bavarus was there for the Jubilee of 1300.Footnote 106 The imaginem eburneam of Břevnov is no longer extant, so it is impossible to know where it was originally carved, but it seems possible that Parisian Gothic ivories were available for sale at the Roman curia.Footnote 107 The circulation of Limoges enamels in Rome before and during the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) is an interesting parallel.Footnote 108 A representative of the entrepreneurial Parisian carvers might well have marketed their fashionable devotional objects in the Eternal City. Therefore, by the turn of the fourteenth century it seems that consumers in western and central Europe had several ways to obtain ivories carved in Paris.
The exceptional nature of the Saint-Sulpice triptych raises the possibility that it was a gift to Boniface VIII. Given its scale and technical aspirations, I would argue that the triptych was commissioned with this pontiff’s sophisticated tastes in mind.Footnote 109 The Cloisters diptych (late 1280s–95) (Figure 6.12), similarly ostentatious in terms of material consumption and with a bespoke iconography that includes princely figures of Church and State among the saved, raised the possibility that the French court actively commissioned ivories from the Saint-Sulpice yvoirier. On the polyptych at the Hermitage, a miniature figure wearing the thirteenth-century papal tiara leaps out of his sepulchre directly below Christ in the Last Judgment (Figure 6.46).
The courtly ambit of Philippe le Bel (r. 1285–1314) offers a likely artistic and political context for these ivories that depict popes and kings. The supportive relationship between monarch and pope seen in the Cloisters diptych might point to Nicholas IV, who had a productive alliance with the French kings both before his election, as legate, and afterwards, as pope (r. 1288–92).Footnote 110 The rapport between Boniface VIII and the French Crown, by contrast, was extremely volatile and tense, although there were moments of rapprochement between the Holy See and Philippe le Bel.Footnote 111 One was in 1297, when, after a period of marked strain, a series of diplomatic exchanges resulted in the canonization of Louis IX. This was a potential context for the exchange of luxury gifts.Footnote 112 More compelling still are the events of 1302–3. In those years, relations between Philippe and Boniface reached their nadir with the threatened excommunication of the king, his realm under interdict, and an attempted murder of the pope.
In December 1301 Boniface VIII promulgated two bulls directed against Philippe le Bel.Footnote 113 Salvator mundi revoked the papal privileges enjoyed by the king, and Asculta, fili accused him of widespread incompetence. The second bull summoned French ecclesiastics to Rome for a council the following November to discuss the king’s “direction, peace of mind, and salvation as well as the good and prosperous governance of his realm (directionem, quietem atque salutem, ac donum et prosperum regimen ipsius regni).”Footnote 114 Philippe responded in April 1302 by assembling the French high clergy at Notre-Dame in Paris, where he began a number of overdue reforms in the realm but also drafted an inflammatory riposte to the papal bulls.Footnote 115 Boniface’s counter response was blistering: in a sermon at Anagni he berated Philippe IV’s advisors Pierre Flotte, Jacques of Châtillon, and Robert II of Artois (this last has figured frequently in our study), calling on God to punish them both spiritually and temporally.Footnote 116 As for the king, Boniface VIII intimated that Philippe’s very soul was in grave danger: “When one of the most important members of Christianity, in trusting himself to blind ones, brings himself so sadly close to destruction, lest divine protection come to his rescue, the Church, his mother, laments, and seeks to save his soul (salute eius quaerens remedium) and exhausts itself in searching for a way to save such majesty from wreckage.”Footnote 117
The events leading to the terrible Battle of the Golden Spurs erupted in this already tense atmosphere. Flemish revolts culminated on 11 July 1302, when the French army under Robert II of Artois rode on Kortrijk to reinforce a stranded garrison. The ensuing bloodbath decimated the nobles of the realm, especially those close to the French court. The very individuals Boniface had threatened with spiritual and temporal punishment in his response just weeks earlier were slaughtered on the fields of Groeninge outside Kortrijk. Philippe le Bel, along with the rest of Europe, interpreted the rout as divine retribution, evidence that France was no longer under divine guardianship.Footnote 118 The king was the only individual named in the pope’s outburst who had not yet been punished, and his soul was clearly in jeopardy.
The conciliatory embassy that Philippe sent to the pope in early October 1302 was spurred by fear, guilt, and an increasing sense of responsibility.Footnote 119 The letter Philippe dispatched with his ambassadors was flattering and self-denigrating (“devota pedum oscula beatorum”), asking Boniface to welcome his representatives and grant them an audience.Footnote 120 It is inconceivable that the diplomats of the French crown arrived before the pope empty-handed.Footnote 121 The magnificent Saint-Sulpice triptych would have been an appropriate offering not only because of its sumptuousness but because the scene that received the most prominent treatment, the Last Judgment affixed to the top, directly addressed the king’s most pressing concern: his own pending judgment and the salvation of his own soul. The king’s “directionem, quietem atque salute” were topics to be discussed by the assembled prelates in 1302, and it is fitting that a scene of divine judgment figured so precariously on this likely diplomatic gift.
How might the carver of the Saint-Sulpice triptych have reacted to such a commission, assuming that he was apprised of the tense political atmosphere in which his work would figure? If the Last Judgment iconography resonated with the king’s concern for his soul, the prominent instruments of the Passion – cross, nails, lance, and crown of thorns – likely resonated with the carver’s own essential implements of nails and wood.Footnote 122 The additive technique of cutting, doweling, and gluing captured the torments of the Crucifixion, the joining of the cross and nailing of the flesh in particular, acts that each new sin painfully re-enacts, spurring penitence.Footnote 123 In affixing the Last Judgment to the triptych with pegs, the holes of which remain (Figure 6.45), the artist opted for a technique that replicates and echoes the violence enacted on the body of Christ at the Crucifixion, acts to which the stern Judge refers by gesturing toward the implements of his Passion. The Saint-Sulpice yvoirier’s unusual predilection for the additive techniques was therefore especially relevant in what was probably one of the most important commissions he received. In addition to the gouge and chisel as the driving metaphor (as examined in Chapter 3), perhaps the artist explored here how his own tools echoed the tools of salvation. If so, this was an exceptionally self-reflexive moment in the history of Gothic ivories, mobilized at a moment when the king’s soul was at stake.
The story of Boniface VIII and Philippe le Bel ended badly, in excommunication, interdict, attempted murder, death, and damnatio memoriae. In summarizing the tumultuous events of 1302, before relations crumbled in 1303 with the attempted kidnapping of Boniface VIII at Anagni,Footnote 124 Elizabeth A. R. Brown noted that for Philippe le Bel, “the episode reveals also that faith in and fear of God, and even more, fear of the Last Judgment, advanced, even if momentarily, the causes of justice and reform.”Footnote 125 The same fears may also have inspired an exceptional Gothic ivory.
This chapter has focused on the production of Gothic ivories in the decades around 1300, in particular the output of a single ivory-carving enterprise in Paris renowned for its production of the so-called Saint-Sulpice triptych. That the work of the yvoirier was neighbourhood- and project-based, like that of the Parisian libraire, helps explain the stylistic similarities and differences seen in this group of works, a combination that has long troubled scholars of Gothic ivories. The artistic imagination of this master carver was not circumscribed by the limits of the medium. Rather, his (or her) innovative and audacious works are feats not only of carving but also of gluing and dowelling, additive techniques that surpassed the limits of the already enormous elephant tusk on the workbench. While the carver exploited the finely detailed carving that ivory made possible, he also strove for impressive size in the most elite commissions. Identifying the Saint-Sulpice triptych in the collection of Pope Boniface VIII lets us think of Gothic ivories in general as works of artifice meant to impress and perhaps even intimidate one’s peers and rivals, but the emphasis on the Last Judgment resonates specifically with the relations between Philippe le Bel and Boniface VIII.Footnote 126 This commission may have allowed the Saint-Sulpice yvoirier to reflect upon his own artistic approach, to think about the significance of affixing and gluing elements together in addition to manipulating a chisel and gouge. Such reflection about technique may have informed the exceptional and ultimately fragile construction of the scene of Christ acknowledging the instruments of the Passion and judging the soul of the king.
