Inventories of the clarissan royal abbey of Longchamp, founded in 1255 by Isabelle of France (1225–70), the pious sister of Louis IX, reveal the accumulation of Gothic ivories by French elites around 1300, just as the popularity of such objects crested. In the final year of Agnès d’Harcourt’s second term as abbess (r. 1264–75, 1281–7),Footnote 1 the convent owned five carved ivories: two walnut-wood crosses with ivory corpora (“Une crois dont le fust est noius et les ymages dyvuire”), two ivory images (“ii [ymages] d’yuvre”), and a gilt wood diptych with mounted ivory relief panels of Christ in Majesty surrounded by the four evangelists on one leaf and the Crucifixion on the other.Footnote 2 Another inventory two years later gives additional details about the two ivory images; one had a tabernacle and the other did not (“Item une ymage de yuvire a chapele et une sans chapele de yuvire”).Footnote 3 In the last decades of the thirteenth century the sacristan and treasurer of Longchamp had at their disposal a range of object types discussed in this book: crucifixes with ivory corpora, statuettes of the Virgin and Child with and without tabernacles, and what seems to be a large composite diptych with ivory reliefs mounted inside.Footnote 4
In 1305 Longchamp’s Abbess Jeanne de Vitry I (r. 1299–1305, 1308–15, 1325–8) ordered a full inventory of the convent’s incomes, expenses, and possessions, and four of the five ivories were described.Footnote 5 Two decades later, when Jeanne began her final tenure on 9 October 1325, she undertook yet another inventory of the sacristy.Footnote 6 Among the prized relics enclosed in gilt silver, rock crystal, and brightly coloured silks there were now eleven ivories. This inventory groups the contents hierarchically, according to material, and describes the ivories in greater detail:
A white casket of ivory which belonged to Madame who founded us, and four cloths, two chemises, a head covering, a cotte, an anqueton [undergarment], stockings, and a pillow which all belonged to the said lady.
A gilt casket which belonged to Jeanne de Gueux in which Madame’s things are kept.
An image of Our Lady of ivory with a tabernacle (à chapele) all of gilt silver.
An image of Our Lady of ivory without a tabernacle.
An image of Our Lady of ivory with a tabernacle of wood filled with images of ivory.
The Assumption of Our Lady in a tablel all of ivory.
An image of the Coronation of Our Lady of ivory with a tabernacle of wood and of baleine.
A crucifix and an image of Our Lady in a little tablel of ivory.
Two crosses of dark wood [de baleineFootnote 7] with images of ivory.
An image of Saint Agnes of ivory with a tabernacle of wood and of baleine.Footnote 8
The ivories from 1287 and 1305 – two wooden crosses with ivory corpora and the wooden diptych with ivory scenes of the Crucifixion and Christ in Majesty – reappear in 1325. In addition there are three Marian images of ivory rather than the two listed earlier: a Virgin and Child statuette without a tabernacle, a Virgin and Child statuette with a gilt silver tabernacle, and a wooden polyptych with ivory statuette and relief scenes, likely of the Infancy. The latter corresponds to a tabernacle like the one in Trani discussed in Chapter 1 (Figure 1.6), and it is probably the image with tabernacle mentioned in the earlier inventories. The Virgin and Child statuette with an expensive gilt silver tabernacle was the newcomer, acquired in the first decades of the fourteenth century.
The most striking addition, at the top of the list, is an ivory casket that belonged to the abbey’s founder and therefore dated before 1270, when Isabelle passed away.Footnote 9 It may have resembled the ivory boxes with silver mounts mentioned in the royal accounts examined in Chapter 1, some of the first products of the Parisian ivory-carving tabletiers. Perhaps we can visualize a casket something like the one with blind arcading at the Musée Cluny (Cl. 453), from the founding collection of Alexandre du Sommerard (Figure E.1).Footnote 10 Isabelle’s dresses, undergarments, and head coverings, relics of the saintly princess, were preserved alongside her ivory box, and all of her belongings were stored inside the gilt casket (likely gilt wood) donated by the abbess Jeanne de Gueux.Footnote 11
Figure E.1 Casket with architectural motifs. Paris, 1250–1300. Ivory, with modern metal fittings and wood base, 11 × 23 × 15 cm. MNMA-Cluny, Cl. 453.
Four smaller devotional ivories are also first recorded in the 1325 inventory. Following the thirteenth-century wooden diptych is a tablel entirely of ivory with Assumption scenes, surely a unique textual reference to a triptych with scenes of the Death of the Virgin like those examined in Chapter 4. Ivory images of the Coronation of the Virgin and of Saint Agnes are mounted in tabernacles of contrasting light and dark wood.Footnote 12 Lastly, a small tablel of ivory, almost certainly a diptych, depicts the Crucifixion and the Virgin and Child, one of the most popular iconographies on small-scale diptychs. Given the hierarchical order of the list, these four ivories are probably smaller than the objects listed above. Perhaps these items were acquired between 1305 and 1325, an especially suitable date range for the tablel with the Assumption, or perhaps they were not listed in the older inventories because they were private objects belonging to individual Clarissans, not kept with the sacristan and therefore not counted as institutional property. It seems especially likely that the unusual iconography of the Saint Agnes tabernacle was connected with the early abbess Agnès d’Harcourt, who commissioned the abbey’s first extant inventory in 1287.Footnote 13
After its foundation by Princess Isabelle, Longchamp continued to be strongly supported by noble ladies of the Capetian line. Notably, Blanche of France (1313–58), the daughter of Philippe V le Long, was pledged to the convent in 1319 and spent her whole life in the community.Footnote 14 Women formerly at the Capetian court sometimes retired to Longchamp, and younger daughters of the nobility were dedicated to the convent or retired there later in life.Footnote 15 The abundance of Gothic ivories enumerated in the 1325 inventory is therefore linked not only to the precedent set by Isabelle of France’s ivory casket but also to the continuing aristocratic composition of the monastery, with the nuns’ devotional tastes closely following the courtly fashions of the houses of France, Flanders, Brabant, and Artois. The Longchamp inventories signal just the type of community that relished Gothic ivories at the height of their popularity.Footnote 16 Yet the number and range of ivory objects in the convent’s treasury is remarkable, as is their proportion to the whole: ten of the twenty-eight items listed in the sacristy are Gothic ivories, which shows which materials were considered efficacious by the community. I would argue that Longchamp’s accumulation of ivory is a consequence of the aristocratic nature of the convent (the Clarissans followed obedience and humility, but not strict poverty) and its specific ties to the Capetian house.Footnote 17
Of noble lineage and devout predisposition, the Clarissan nuns at Longchamp in the early fourteenth century were in many ways the ideal viewers and users of Gothic ivories. Well-bred, literate, and raised at court, these consumers had ready access to the range and variety of interpretations explored in this book. Unless they were consecrated at a very young age, their tastes were formed during their upbringing at court and they had the means to satisfy those tastes when adorning their sacred spaces. Two cases in point are the sisters Jeanne and Marguerite of the house of Brabant, who entered Longchamp in 1301 and 1303, respectively.Footnote 18 They had close family ties with many of the individuals shown to possess Gothic ivories in Chapter 5. They were grandnieces of Beatrice of Brabant and nieces of Marie of Brabant, who was queen of France and an avid supporter of the convent. On their mother’s side the sisters were first cousins of Marguerite of Châteauvillain, abbess of Flines from 1304 to 1309, who received an ivory diptych from their mutual grandfather, Gui I of Dampierre. Along with their immediate and extended families, the women at Longchamp surely patronized the same shops in the Parisian neighbourhood of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois that furnished ivories around 1300; their convent was located in today’s Bois de Boulogne, about 10 km due west of rue de la Tabletterie. Their purveyors likely included the productive and technically innovative enterprise of the Saint-Sulpice yvoirier, who also made Death of the Virgin triptychs, one of which can almost certainly be recognized in Longchamp’s “Assumption of Our Lady in a tablel all of ivory.”
The fulfilment of the Sedes sapientiae typology, the coupling of the tabernacle form with the Theotokos, and the glorification of the Virgin’s corporeal chastity in the Coronation of the Virgin image – all these Marian theological tropes associated with the chaste interpretation of ivory were relevant to and surely understood by this literate community of women. Perhaps the devotional works in ivory that emphasize Mary’s courtly or aristocratic associations (Coronation and Assumption of the Virgin) resonated with ladies who had renounced prominent marriages to dedicate their lives to chastity. Furthermore, belonging to a courtly “textual community” meant that these women were familiar with the secular texts that engage ivory as a productive material metaphor, such as the Ovide moralisé and the Roman de la Rose.Footnote 19
The sacristan at Longchamp was responsible for the ivories, and she must have deployed them throughout the liturgical year much like the sumptuous reliquaries in the same inventory. The list began with relics of the True Cross, and the last item before the ivories is a stone from the Holy Sepulcher: “Un godet de marbre blanc du sépulchre Notre Seigneur.” Like Isabelle’s ivory casket, it too was a contact relic. The Virgin and Child statuettes (the second and third ivories after the casket), with and without the gilt silver tabernacle, were likely used on Marian feast days in a manner similar to that proposed for the Glorification of the Virgin group at Saint-Denis in Chapter 4, manifesting the Virgin’s chief virtue of chastity. The materiality of ivory augmented Mary’s image; indeed, the rhetoric of the inventory classifies the ivories as a subcategory of relic. Even though the Clarissan convent was blessed with a relic of the Virgin in the form of some of her hair, the reliquary that preserved this precious testimony was not a statuette but a gilt-silver-footed vessel (“Des cheveux de notre dame en un vaissel à pié d’argent doré”).
Imagery of the Passion was also well represented among the Longchamp ivories. A composite diptych with the Crucifixion and Christ in Majesty and two crucifixes with ivory corpora were all thirteenth-century works, and a small diptych with the Crucifixion and Virgin and Child dates to the first decades of the fourteenth century at the latest. The two dialogic diptych forms juxtapose salient scenes of Christian iconography in a way that differs markedly from the strongly narrative large Passion diptychs, for which I proposed signification as tablets of the New Law in Chapter 3. On the crucifixes, the ivory bodies of Christ hanging on deeply hued wooden crosses highlighted the choice of materials. Such corpora are relatively rare survivals from the Gothic period (Figure E.2),Footnote 20 likely because of their fragile facture, as noted in the Livre des métiers of the 1260s.Footnote 21 They present for the viewer the sacrificial mortifications that wrought human salvation, akin to the scrapes and gouges of the chisel described in the Neoplatonic exegesis in Chapter 3. The ivory body hanging on the cross gestures toward a rich tradition of ivory exegesis that deepens engagement in the salvific message of the crucified Christ. Probing these deeper meanings was doubtless encouraged by the presence at Longchamp of confessors and spiritual advisors connected to the epicentre of Franciscan theology in Paris.Footnote 22
Figure E.2 Bargello cross with ivory corpus. Paris, ca. 1270. Cross: wood with incised gilt copper plaques, 44 × 32.3 cm; corpus: ivory, H 18.5 cm. Florence, Museo Nazionale del Bargello, inv. 679 C.
This collection of Gothic ivories provides rich material for investigating how ivories responded to the major theological debates of their time and how deeply they were imbricated in their economic and social contexts – two themes of this book. Longchamp’s status as a royal abbey, founded by the sister of the sainted king Louis IX, suggests a certain linkage between the prevalence of Gothic ivories and the House of Capet. Chapter 1 examined the early evidence of Blanche of Castile and her children purchasing ivories for use at court in the 1230s and 1240s, the decades when the art of ivory carving was first taking root in Paris. Extant royal accounts for the next decades are spottier, yielding little direct evidence for who might have commissioned such works as the Glorification of the Virgin group from Saint-Denis studied in Chapter 4, the Deposition group now at the Louvre discussed in Chapter 3, or even the large standing Virgin and Child described in the first inventory of the Sainte-Chapelle, before 1279 (Figure 1.11).Footnote 23 It is tempting to associate these high-quality works with patrons who had the greatest means, perhaps leading us to rethink the notion of a Court Style.Footnote 24 Yet the choice of material may also dovetail with larger political concerns of the court of Louis IX during his final decade of rule, namely the enigmatic minting of the écu d’or in 1266 and the quixotic choice of Hafsid Tunisia as the goal of the Eighth Crusade, announced in 1267.Footnote 25 The large-scale groups of ivory statuettes, carved from the magnificent tusks of savannah elephants obtained through trans-Saharan exchange, might have resonated with the economic anxieties of the royal household in the last decade of Louis IX’s reign and may well reflect Capetian proto-colonial ambitions.Footnote 26
Nevertheless, by the middle decades of the fourteenth century the popularity of Gothic ivories was waning. Changes in fashion, lack of novelty, and continuing decrease in the price of the raw material possibly rendered ivories less appealing as aspirational devotional objects. In the Decameron (ca. 1350), Giovanni Boccaccio described the mischievous painter Calandrino purchasing an ivory comb (“un pettine d’avorio”), among such other typical gifts for a beloved as purses or knives, to express his affection for an inappropriate paramour.Footnote 27 While an ivory comb might represent a significant outlay of funds, it was nevertheless a purchase within reach for a craftsman, a socioeconomic milieu manifestly different from those described throughout this book. Notably, Calandrino’s (fictional) purchase stands in stark contrast with the high prices of toiletry items associated with Jehan le Scelleur, described in Chapter 1. Disruptions to international trade in the 1340s and 1350s, including the Black Death (1347–53), affected the circulation of ivory as well, and by the second half of the fourteenth century ivory seems to have been scarcer than it was a century earlier.Footnote 28
Evidence of changing fashions can already be seen in the posthumous inventory of the possessions of Louis X, who died in 1316.Footnote 29 It includes only three objects made of ivory. One, an ivory box, likely a pyx, was in the chapel.Footnote 30 Among the joyaux in the coffers of the king’s chamber were two diptychs:
Item, found in the said chamber two pairs of tablets of ivory whose deliverance is the following: one was sold to Monsieur Jehan de Biaumont for the price of 4 livres of Paris, not yet paid; and Monsieur Hugues d’Augeran took the pair without expense [i.e., for free] – they were old and of little value – who is ready to sell [it].Footnote 31
Both diptychs left the royal collection, one at a fairly elevated price of 4 livres, whereas the “old” one was simply given away.Footnote 32 As was apparent in the papal inventory of 1311, by the early fourteenth century some Gothic ivories were already considered old, in poor condition, and not suitable for princely collections. Other non-ivory items dear to the king were clearly recorded in his will and gifted to confidants. Among these was an oliphant (olimphant) which Louis X left to the bishop of Laon, Raoul Rousselet, one of his close advisers. The inventory redactors do not specify whether this enigmatic item was made of ivory or horn. The ivory diptychs, no longer prized, were not bequeathed to loved ones, and instead entered the second-hand market.
Sixteen years later, the post-mortem inventory of Louis X’s second wife, Clémence of Hungary (1293–1328), also survives.Footnote 33 There are ivory caskets and boxes with silver mounts employed as jewellery boxes and pyxes, a luxury toiletry set valued at 6 livres parisi (a high price in comparison with the toiletry sets purchased from Jehan le Scelleur), an ivory and ebony chess set, and an expensive historiated casket with silver mounts (10 livres).Footnote 34 The majority of Clémence’s ivories, however, are listed among the small objects meant to hang from belts: a Saint John of ivory worth 60 sous, a Saint Stephen of ivory worth 30 sous, a mirror and a little box (boueste) of ivory worth 8 sous, and ivory tablets on a black belt worth 100 sous.Footnote 35 These trinkets were of little value. The large-scale luxury objects are both secular: the historiated casket and the toiletry set.Footnote 36 While Clémence has been identified as an important consumer of Gothic ivories, this is not accurate: she owned none of the statuettes (larger than those suspended from a belt), tabernacles, diptychs, or triptychs described in earlier sources and prevalent among surviving objects. Evidently, Clémence did not choose objects made of ivory as spiritual aids, even though she seemed to appreciate luxury items carved with secular scenes – a topic ready for further study.
Jeanne d’Évreux (ca. 1310–71), Clémence’s contemporary and widow of the last Capetian king, Charles IV, also did not appreciate the devotional potential of Gothic ivories.Footnote 37 Jeanne lived into her sixties and her rich testament is filled with extraordinary devotional metalwork in cutting-edge techniques, an astonishing range of gems, and materials comparable to ivory in hardness and use, such as amber, jet, and coral. Yet it contains only six ivory works among thousands listed: a statuette group of the Annunciation on a silver base; an over-the-top flyswatter made of gold cloth bearing the arms of France and Navarre, mounted on a handle of ivory and jet;Footnote 38 a small ivory paternoster; a small ivory box (“petit escrinet”) with gilt silver and enamelled mounts worth 8 francs d’or; and two ivory pyxes.Footnote 39 The Annunciation group is so out of character with the majority of Jeanne’s collection that it may have been among the objects she inherited.Footnote 40
Similar observations can be made about the Valois queens of the next generation: Jeanne of Boulogne (1326–60), second wife of Jean le Bon, owned five small ivory baubles; and Blanche of Navarre (1330–98), briefly married to Philippe VI in 1350, included none in her will.Footnote 41 A decisive shift had clearly taken place, and large carved devotional works of ivory were no longer in vogue. The ivories prized at court were small objects worn on the person, not the imposing polyptychs, triptychs, or statuettes produced in Paris around 1300. Nevertheless, when he died in English captivity in 1364, Jean le Bon had among his belongings a single ivory diptych (“I tableau d’yvoyre”) described as “painted within (peint dedens)” instead of carved.Footnote 42 An ivory object still held a pious king’s attention in his hours of greatest need, but such an object is quite different from those examined throughout this book.
Jean le Braillier offers an instructive case. Danielle Gaborit-Chopin has carefully analyzed the career of this goldsmith who worked for the royal court under Philippe VI and in the first years of the reign of Jean le Bon (ca. 1350–2).Footnote 43 The royal accounts record hundreds of entries for the work of Jean le Braillier, from small repair jobs to the enormous silver and rock-crystal throne made for Jean le Bon.Footnote 44 The 1379–80 inventory of Charles V, who was dauphin when Jean le Braillier worked for the royal house, includes in the chapel of Vincennes “two large and beautiful tableaux of ivory (deux grans beaulx tableaux d’yvire) of the three Marys that Jehan le Braelier made, in a leather case.”Footnote 45 These large and beautiful tableaux clearly made an impact: this is one of only two instances where the inventory redactor gave an artist’s name (the other was Charles’s court painter Girart d’Orléans, cited a few items below). These items prove that a multitalented court artist not only turned his hand to an unaccustomed medium but also mastered it.Footnote 46 This feat of artistic bravura may also hint at a lack of skilled ivory carvers in Paris at that time.
A waning interest in Gothic ivories in the middle decades of the fourteenth century among royal patrons should not be exaggerated: outside of Paris, ivory carving continued to be prized by elites. John Grandisson (1327–69), bishop of Exeter, is a case in point.Footnote 47 After obtaining a good portion of an ivory tusk around 1330, Grandisson commissioned a local English artist to carve two triptychs (BM 1926, 0712.1 and 1861,0416.1) (Figure E.3) and a diptych (BM 1861, 0416.2, and Louvre OA 105), all of which include his heraldic arms. Why did he engage a local artist rather than purchase such objects in Paris? Was a certain nationalism at play on the eve of the Hundred Years’ War? Was access to Paris more difficult, or were Parisian ateliers no longer making the large and expensive works that the bishop so clearly desired and that he had his carver emulate? Such works, as seen in Chapter 6, were characteristic of the previous generation.
Figure E.3 Triptych of Bishop Grandisson. Ivory with silver hinges, 23.8 × 20.6 × 1.7 cm (open). BM, 1861,0416.1.
Several centres of ivory carving flourished in the territories of the Holy Roman Empire. Chief among them was Cologne, a city that deserves its own extensive study. Artisans there produced Gothic ivories by 1300 at the latest, rivalling those of Paris in ingenuity and finesse.Footnote 48 I would wager that an artisan close to the Saint-Sulpice carver brought many of his technical approaches and iconographic schemes to Cologne around 1290 (Figure E.4).Footnote 49 Although little documentary evidence survives, several masters of remarkable skill seem to have carved ivories there in the middle of the century, possibly including the master of the Ochtrup-Langenhorst Virgin (Figure E.5),Footnote 50 the master of the Berlin triptych (SMBK, inv. 628) (Figure E.6),Footnote 51 and, later in the century, the Kremsmünster Master, so called after a diptych in the Benedictine abbey at Kremsmünster.Footnote 52 These works all have early provenances: the Kremsmünster and Ochtrup-Langenhorst ivories have been in their respective religious foundations for centuries,Footnote 53 while the triptych today in Berlin was purchased from the Cologne collection of Anton Josef Essingh (1787–1864).Footnote 54 These works in Upper Austria, Westphalia, and Cologne suggest that by the fourteenth century local religious foundations may have preferred works created within the empire, but whether this predilection existed for practical or ideological reasons is impossible to say. It contrasts with the thirteenth-century examples examined earlier: Abbot Bohuslaus of Zwettl’s purchase of an ivory polyptych in northern France before 1258; the counts of Artois, Flanders, and Hainaut procuring ivories in Paris; or Abbot Bavarus of Břevnov picking out an ivory in Rome around 1300.
Figure E.4 Triptych with the Glorification of the Virgin and the Crucifixion. Cologne or Paris, ca. 1290. Ivory with silver hinges, 23 × 14.8 cm (open). Wyvern Collection, UK, inv. 809.
Figure E.5 Ochtrup-Langenhorst Virgin and Child. Rhineland, 1310–20. Ivory on original base, 23 × 6.9 cm. Ochtrup-Langenhorst, Augustinian convent.
Figure E.6 Glorification of the Virgin triptych, by the so-called Berlin Master. Cologne, ca. 1350. Ivory with silver hinges, 15.7 × 12.4 cm (open). SMBK, inv. 628.
Ivories came roaring back into fashion in the late fourteenth century with the extravagant collecting habits of the sons of Jean le Bon: Charles V (1338–80), Jean de Berry (1340–1416), and Philip the Bold of Burgundy (1342–1404).Footnote 55 In Chapter 1 I discussed Philip the Bold’s 1377 purchase of 26 livres of ivory from Parisian tabletier Jehan Girart and its delivery to Jean de Marville for “certaines besoignes que Mgr lui avoit enchargiées.” No other record of this ivory or ivories carved by Marville exists, but an enormous statuette now at the Walters Art Museum, the so-called Laval Virgin (71.188) (Figure E.7), is one of the few examples to approach in scale what 12.73 kg of ivory might produce. Measuring 29 cm in height, the ivory was carved from a solid cylinder approximately 16 by 13.5 cm in diameter that originally would have weighed around 9.28 kg. In the possession of a Mgr. Sauvé of Laval Cathedral in the late nineteenth century, the object has been compared to the exceptionally fine Franco-Burgundian ronde bosse enamels of around 1400; indeed, the sweet roundness of the Laval Virgin’s features echoes the visage and proportions of the Virgin and Child at the centre of the “Goldene Rössl” of 1405.Footnote 56 The comparison with the metalwork masterpiece draws attention to the missing metalwork elements of the Laval Virgin: her brooch, tassels on the cushions, and an object the Virgin once offered to the Christ Child. If Jean de Marville carved the 26 livres of ivory purchased by Philip the Bold into a single statue, its size would have exceeded that of the Laval Virgin and no doubt its finish and accoutrements would have been just as fine.
Figure E.7 Laval Virgin and Child. Paris, ca. 1400. Ivory, metalwork additions missing, 29 × 16.5 × 13 cm. WAM, 71.188.
The accounts of the Burgundian court list many other ivory objects purchased for Phillip the Bold and his wife, Margaret III of Flanders (1350–1405): several luxury combs and mirrors, knives with ivory handles, “tables d’yvoire à ouvre soye” (perhaps writing tablets with silk fastenings), caskets, and crucifixes.Footnote 57 But it is an account paid out in 1385 that offers a fascinating glimpse into a radically changed luxury market. Simon de Brugdam, a knight, and Jehan Leenot, the water bailiff (“bailly de l’eau”) of Lécluse, the main port of Bruges, were paid 447 livres parisi for bringing the following to Arras:Footnote 58
Two parrots; 36 gilt flasks of rosewater; 200 busselez of ivory; a ronde busse of musk; two other haultes busselez of musk; a cornet of civet; a plate busse of ivory plaine de linguloie [plain ivory with aloewood? full of aloewood?];Footnote 59 six monkeys which the said bailiff, following the order of Mgr, gave to [six noblemen’s names]; four pairs of birds of Calemonne [lovebirds?]; and two African guinea hens [gélines d’Inde].Footnote 60
Elephant ivory was sourced among an astonishing array of live exotic animals, including monkeys, guinea fowl, parrots, and perhaps lovebirds, and such other animal products as musk and civet, the latter a pungent substance from the African mammal Civettictis civetta.Footnote 61 Rosewater and aloewood, aromatic plant products from Damascus and the Middle East, respectively, make this shipment a veritable cornucopia of the luxury flora and fauna prized in late medieval Europe.Footnote 62 Interestingly, the units used to measure ivory record capacity, not weight as seen elsewhere, perhaps because of its bulk shipment by water rather than marketplace trading. Conceptualizing the exact quantity of the 1385 purchase is difficult, and I will not attempt an exact conversion here, but it seems comparable to that purchased in 1377 from Jehan Girart in Paris – 26 livres or 12.73 kg.Footnote 63 We might conclude that substantial amounts of ivory were being brought to Arras for one of the duke’s projects, although what Philip had in mind for this amount of ivory is unclear. The quantities of aromatics included in the shipment show that he was purchasing his luxuries wholesale, direct from Mediterranean merchants arriving at the port in Bruges and thereby circumventing fairs or the centralized market of Paris.
We can trace ivory’s return to fashion by comparing Charles V’s inventory while he was still dauphin in 1363 with the one made just before his death in 1380. The twenty-five-year-old prince owned only three ivories: a carved casket with silver mounts, a statuette of Saint Louis, and a painted diptych (“tableaux d’yvoire faictz de pincel”) with scenes from the lives of Mary and Christ.Footnote 64 The unusual format of a painted ivory diptych recalls the one that Jean le Bon, Charles’s father, had with him when he died in London a year later: perhaps they were paired devotional items. The three ivories in 1363 grew to nearly seventy by 1380. Some of these were surely inherited when Charles became king: pyxes, crosses, and various boxes were already dispersed among the royal residences.Footnote 65 Items listed as being in the king’s private studies might be more closely attached to his personal patronage and tastes, and this is where the majority of the Gothic ivories, including the lion’s share of statuettes, diptychs, and polyptychs resided.
Charles V’s study at Melun had thirteen ivories, at Saint-Germain-en-Laye fifteen, at Saint-Pol eleven, at the Louvre seven, and at the château he built himself at Vincennes there were eighteen ivories in the main study plus two more in the secondary study in the keep (“l’estude du Roy en la Poterne du Donjon”).Footnote 66 Many of these items were likely heirlooms. The most obvious was a six-panel polyptych at Vincennes ornamented with the arms of his grandmother, Queen Jeanne of Burgundy (1293–1349), wife of Philippe VI Valois (m. 1313), which must date to earlier in the century.Footnote 67 We have already seen that the diptych in the oratory of Vincennes, associated with the artist Jean le Braillier, dates to the time of Charles’s father, Jean le Bon.
Detailed descriptions of some of the late fourteenth-century ivories help us match them with extant works. A small ivory diptych (“ungs petiz tableaulx d’yvire de deux pièces ou dedans sont l’Ascension et la Penthecoste”) formerly in Charles’s study at Saint-Germain-en-Laye depicts the relatively rare pairing of the Ascension and the Pentecost; Gaborit-Chopin recognized it in a diptych from the Timbal Collection now at the Louvre (OA 2599) (Figure E.8).Footnote 68 It is an exquisite example of the handiwork of the so-called Master of the Great Passion diptychs, known for the revival of large-scale Passion diptychs in the last third of the fourteenth century (e.g., Minneapolis Institute of Art, 83.72; Figure E.9).Footnote 69 Raymond Koechlin already noted that the Great Passion diptychs hark back to those studied in Chapter 3,Footnote 70 but it is worth noting that these impressive works are still only two-thirds the size of the Northern group diptychs of the mid-thirteenth century. The latter were about 30 cm high, while the “Great” diptychs of the late fourteenth century are some 10 cm shorter. Several other objects in the inventories of Charles V and his brothers likely correspond to the Great Passion diptychs, including two large tablets (“deux grans tableaux d’yvire”) carved with scenes of the Passion in Charles V’s study at Melun, and, in the collection of Jean, the duke of Berry, a diptych in high relief (“ymaiges eslevées”) with scenes from the Passion.Footnote 71 An unpublished diptych with exactly the same measurement as Charles V’s diminutive Ascension and Pentecost diptych (Figure E.8) was in the cabinet of the abbey of Sainte-Geneviève before it entered the French national collections in 1797; the two works are, without a doubt, by the same gifted carver (BnF, Cabinet des Médailles, inv. 55.304) (Figure E.10).Footnote 72
Figure E.8 Diptych with the Ascension and Pentecost. Paris, 1360–75. Ivory with silver hinges, 7.2 × 5.8 cm (each leaf). Louvre, OA 2599.
Figure E.9 Diptych with scenes of the Passion and afterlife of Christ. Ivory with metal hinges, 20.8 × 11.1 cm (each leaf). The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 83.72.
Figure E.10 Diptych with the Adoration and Crucifixion. Paris, 1360–75. Ivory with later metal hinges, 7.3 × 11.2 cm (open). BnF, Cabinet des Médailles, 55.304.
While the format of the Great Passion diptychs is closely aligned with object types examined in this book, many ivories described in Charles V’s inventory are innovative multimedia compositions that mark a striking departure from earlier Gothic works. For example, a diptych (“ungs tableaulx”) in the king’s study in the keep of Vincennes, depicting Christ and the Virgin on either panel, was formed of two openwork roundels set in a silver frame.Footnote 73 This might have been similar to an ajouré diptych now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (17.190.269) (Figure E.11), in which the roundels are set against a wooden background skilfully painted with encaustic.Footnote 74 In 1969 Jap Leeuwenberg considered many such ivories fakes, dismissing most that expressed a hint of circa 1400 style.Footnote 75 Scholars are gradually rehabilitating many of these objects and restoring ivories from around 1400 to museum vitrines.Footnote 76 A similar multimedia object, once in Charles V’s study at the Louvre, is a round Veronica made of amber surrounded by four ivory evangelists.Footnote 77 This must have been an object arranged like the pax now at the Wallace Collection, which has basse-taille enamel evangelists instead of ivory ones (Figure E.12).Footnote 78 Gold, silver, enamel, amber, illuminated parchment, and brazilwood were used in conjunction with carved ivories. In this way the objects described in Charles V’s inventory differ from composite works of the thirteenth century, which were typically ivory appliqué plaques mounted in wooden tabernacles: in the late fourteenth century, more seems to have been done with less.Footnote 79 Smaller pieces of ivory tended to be mounted in precious silver frames, although one diptych has ivory on its exterior and gold figures within, articulating a hierarchy of materials.Footnote 80 The objects described in Charles V’s collection demonstrate not just a change in taste but also, apparently, a change in the availability of materials. Indeed, Michele Tomasi noted that a box in that collection is surely an early work by the Embriachi family, whose workshops in northern Italy predominantly used bone rather than ivory.Footnote 81
Figure E.11 Openwork diptych with the Crucifixion and Entombment. Ivory, silver, wood, and encaustic, 16 × 32.2 cm (open). MMA, 17.190.269.
Figure E.12 Pax. Bruges or Königsberg, 1380–1400. Amber, silver, gold, basse-taille enamels, in silver frame, 14.3 × 12.4 cm. London, Wallace Collection, III G 295.
The many ivory statuettes described among Charles V’s holdings were likely the same mix of new and old, even though the descriptions provided are less helpful in dating such works. Of the four seated Virgin and Child statuettes, a Coronation of the Virgin group on an ebony seat, and statuettes of Saints Anne and John in the king’s study at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, one or two probably date to when the palace was a favoured residence of Louis IX.Footnote 82 By contrast, in the oratory of Vincennes, an ivory group of the Annunciation (“ung ymage d’yvire de Nostre Dame, et ung ange devant luy et le pot, sur ung entablement d’argent, esmaillé de vert, et l’Ave Maria escript autour”) recalls a pair of statuettes now in Langres (Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, inv. 844.3.4) mounted on an ebony base, preserved with a boiled-leather case bearing the arms of Charles’s brother Philip the Bold of Burgundy (Figure E.13).Footnote 83 The ebony base, which may be original, has been shortened. A vase once stood between the figures, and the statuettes have been rearranged such that the angel’s gaze awkwardly misses its objective. Worse still, the Virgin has undergone a drastic intervention: her face is a complete restoration, glued in, and her forearms are also replacements. These dramatic repairs have overshadowed the clear evidence of the Burgundian arms on the original leather case, leading to the group’s dismissal as a forgery by Leeuwenberg and its attribution to Sicily by Gaborit-Chopin.Footnote 84 The group came to Langres in 1842 with the collection of the local amateur Pierre Guyot de Giey (1771–1844), although nothing is known about where or how he obtained the object.Footnote 85 We cannot identify the Annunciation group described at Vincennes in 1380 with the extant group at Langres.Footnote 86 In any event, the Annunciation group is perfectly in line with extant ivory carvings of the last decades of the fourteenth century.
Figure E.13 Annunciation group. Paris, ca. 1400. Ivory on ebony base, 27.5 × 18.5 cm (with base). Langres, Musée d’Art et d’Histoire Guy-Baillet, 844.3.4.
Evidence separate from Charles V’s inventories also testifies to his having held a special appreciation for ivory works of earlier generations, notably those from the time of King Louis IX. The large-scale ivory statuette from the Sainte-Chapelle (Louvre, OA 57) (Figure 1.11), first noted in the 1265–79 inventory of the royal foundation, is described succinctly in the 1341 and 1366–7 inventories as “An image of Our Lady of ivory, with a crown of silver.”Footnote 87 A note in the margins, likely by the hand of the treasurer Arnoul de Grandpont, commented that this item was in fact “Devers le roy est et la corone ci,” meaning that the ivory statuette was not at that moment at the Sainte-Chapelle but rather was with Charles V.Footnote 88 The modest silver crown was left behind. When Hugues Boileau succeeded Arnoul as treasurer in 1377, another inventory was made, once again describing the small gilt silver crown made for an ivory Virgin that the king had with him, leaving the crown behind (“quam ymaginem rex habet apud se et coronam dimisit predictam”).Footnote 89
The next mention of this ivory statuette dates to a century later, in 1480, drawing upon a now lost early fifteenth-century inventory. By this point the Virgin had been returned to the treasury, evidently with many luxurious additions commissioned by Charles V.Footnote 90 The ivory statuette stood on an elaborate gilt silver base enamelled with the arms of France, and wore a new golden crown adorned with eight large and four small pearls, four emeralds, and four balas rubies. The Virgin wore a large and bright (vivus) emerald brooch on her gown and the Christ Child had a brooch with a cameo.Footnote 91 Mary had a golden ring with another emerald, but it was lost already by 1480 (“in qua defficit anulus predictus cum lapide suo”).
King Charles V therefore had the ivory Virgin and Child from the Sainte-Chapelle among his personal belongings and a talented jeweller provided it with a new base, a sumptuous crown, brooches, and a ring. We know of two other instances of Charles V augmenting eminent pieces of the treasure of the Sainte-Chapelle: the cantorial staff of the palatine chapel received the impressive finial incorporating the enormous cameo of Constantine;Footnote 92 and the Ottonian gospel book known as the Fourth Evangeliary of the Sainte-Chapelle received an impressive jewelled binding, with the front cover incorporating pieces of thirteenth-century goldsmith’s work (probably from a processional cross) and the back echoing the Matthew author portrait on fol. 16 v in nielloed gold.Footnote 93 Charles’s active interest in the ecclesiastical treasures of the crown was noted by his biographer, Christine de Pisan, in Les faits et bonnes moeurs du roi Charles V le sage. Christine reports that the pious Charles, in addition to taking trips to Saint-Denis and Notre-Dame, went often to the Sainte-Chapelle. On one occasion, “curious about all virtuous things, [he] wished for the armoire where the holy relics of the palace chapel are kept to be opened and examined (fust visiter), so that all the holy things within could be better catalogued (mieux avoir certification).”Footnote 94
If we believe Christine de Pisan, then Charles V seems to have instigated the very inventory of the Sainte-Chapelle in which Arnoul de Grandpont notes that the ivory Virgin and Child was “devers le roi.” Soon after becoming king, he scoured the chapel’s treasures, seeking ways to augment the legitimacy of his Valois reign through compelling objects. It is not surprising that the works Charles V chose to augment refer back to earlier exalted Christian rulers: Constantine the Great on the cantorial staff, the Ottonian rulers for the Gospel book, and the Capetians at their zenith under Louis IX for the Sainte-Chapelle Virgin and Child. The sumptuous golden parure that Charles V gifted to the ivory Virgin of the Sainte-Chapelle tied him to the finest Parisian craftsmanship of the last third of the thirteenth century. While I cannot consider here the degree to which material metaphors of the Virgin and chastity in ivory continued to be appreciated generations after their articulation at the height of Gothic ivory carving, it seems likely that these continued to resonate. For Charles V and his brothers, still struggling to assert the legitimacy of the Valois line while the Hundred Years’ War raged, Gothic ivories’ association with the heyday of French ascendancy may have been its most compelling feature. Ivories were significant as heirloom objects tying the Valois to generations of legitimate predecessors. The Capetian character of these objects spurred the appreciation and revival of Gothic ivories in the late fourteenth century at the hands of Jean le Bon’s sons.
One last item in Charles V’s collection, found not among his joyaux but in his library at the Louvre, marks another end point in the story of Gothic ivories. The Catalan Atlas (BnF MS. Esp. 30) (Figures E.14), perhaps made by the Majorcan cartographer Elisha ben Abraham Cresques between 1375 and 1380, signals the arrival of a very different age.Footnote 95 This large multi-panelled object charts the state of Europe’s geographic knowledge at the height of the Gothic period, incorporating evidence from portolan charts, recent travel accounts such as Marco Polo’s (accurate or not), and more traditional Arabic and European sources.Footnote 96 It not only tracks current geographical knowledge but also foreshadows developments of the next century, presaging the so-called Age of Discovery.
Figure E.14 Catalan Atlas, by Elisha ben Abraham Cresques (?). Majorca, ca. 1375. Vellum on wood boards, 6 panels, each 64 × 25 cm. Detail of West panel II recto and verso. BnF, MS Esp. 30.
The panels that depict West Africa represent sites important to trans-Saharan trade – Sijilmasa, Taghaza, Timbuktu, and Gao, among others – on the routes discussed in Chapter 1, even if these are occasionally confused. Presiding over West Africa is the best-known figure on the Atlas, the famous Mansa Musa, emperor of Mali, who lived and ruled in the early fourteenth century.Footnote 97 To his left, mounted on a camel, is a turbaned Amazigh, one of the indigenous individuals responsible for manning and safeguarding the trans-Saharan caravans that bore gold, ivory, and other goods across the desert. He rides away from a cluster of tents that represent his people’s pastoral life. The caption on the other side of this desert encampment is the first unequivocal evidence that fourteenth-century Europeans understood that elephant ivory came to Europe from sources in West Africa. The badly abraded caption reads: “Cap Finisterre in West Africa. Here Africa begins, and it ends in Alexandria and Babylon [i.e., Fustat]. It begins here and comprises all the coast of Barbarie, towards Alexandria, and towards the south [towards] Ethiopia … On these beaches much ivory is found, for the [multitude] of elephants.”Footnote 98 Sub-Saharan West Africa is clearly identified as the source of elephant ivory circulating in the Mediterranean.Footnote 99 Poring over this magnificent chart, Charles V might have deduced that the transport of ivory tusks was still largely in the hands of Imazighen camel caravans across the Sahara, but the expansive frontiers of the Catalan Atlas point toward a future with even broader horizons in the early modern world.
To the left of the Imazighen tents, sailing south of the brightly coloured Canary Islands, a low-slung galley flying the flag of Majorca is manned by four Europeans. The Canaries had been known to European sailors since the late thirteenth century; they were occupied by the Genoese navigator Lancelotto Malocello around 1336 and celebrated in the early fifteenth-century conquest epic Le Canarien.Footnote 100 The inscription to the left of the ship reads: “Jaime Ferrer’s ship departs for the river of gold on the feast of Saint Lawrence which is the 10th of August in the year 1346.”Footnote 101 The precocious expedition of Jaime Ferrer, a Majorcan captain who sailed with his crew to find the origin of West African gold, seems never to have returned. Yet the promise of riches awaiting at a river of gold, “El Dorado,” would continue to tempt seafaring adventurers southward along the African coast in subsequent generations, and the opening of the Atlantic sea route along the coast of West Africa over the course of the fifteenth century would irrevocably change the world.
Charles V’s Catalan Atlas is thus Janus-faced, depicting for the first time the agents of trans-Saharan trade who brought elephant tusks from West Africa to western Europe while at the same time representing the burgeoning forces that would soon shift the global socioeconomic balance. From this point forward Europeans’ interest in a direct connection to West Africa, not only for gold but increasingly for enslaved humans to work sugarcane plantations – first in the western Mediterranean, then in the West African archipelago, and finally across the Atlantic in the New World – would shift the ethical balance of the ivory trade.Footnote 102 With the so-called Age of Discovery, overconsumption of elephant tusks and colonialism were among the exploitative practices of Europeans encountering the world, not just along the West African littoral but also along the Swahili coast, in India, throughout Asia, and in the Americas. Ivories of the fifteenth century therefore belong to a radically different world. They emerged from socioeconomic circumstances, interests, and needs profoundly different from those that inspired Gothic ivories.Footnote 103
