| IVORY MIRROR CASE, 1340 |
An ivory chest of simple square shape, once the property of the Rev. Mr. Bowle, is given in detail by Carter in the Ancient Specimens, and is as interesting an example of allegorical romance as can be imagined. Observe the attitude of the knight who has laid his sword across a chasm in order to use it as a bridge. He is proceeding on all fours, with unbent knees, right up the sharp edge of the blade!
Among small box shrines which soon developed in Christian times from the Consular diptychs is one, in the inventory of Roger de Mortimer, "a lyttle long box of yvory, with an ymage of Our ladye therein closed."
The differences in expression between French, English, and German ivory carvings is quite interesting. The French faces and figures have always a piquancy of action: the nose is a little retroussée and the eyelids long. The German shows more solidity of person, less transitoriness and lightness about the figure, and the nose is blunter. The English carvings are often spirited, so as to be almost grotesque in their strenuousness, and the tool-mark is visible, giving ruggedness and interest.
Nothing could be more exquisite than the Gothic shrines in ivory made in the thirteenth century, but descriptions, unless accompanied by illustrations, could give little idea of their individual charm, for the subject is usually the same: the Virgin and child, in the central portion of the triptych, while scenes from the Passion occupy the spaces on either side, in the wings.
Statuettes in the round were rare in early Christian times: one of the Good Shepherd in the Basilewski collection is almost unique, but pyxes in cylindrical form were made, the sculpture on them being in relief. In small ivory statuettes it was necessary to follow the natural curve of the tusk in carving the figure, hence the usual twisted, and sometimes almost contorted forms often seen in these specimens. Later, this peculiarity was copied in stone, unconsciously, simply because the style had become customary. One of the most charming little groups of figures in ivory is in the Louvre, the Coronation of the Virgin. The two central figures are flanked by delightful jocular little angels, who have that characteristic close-lipped, cat-like smile, which is a regular feature in all French sculpture of the Gothic type. In a little triptych of the fourteenth century, now in London, there is the rather unusual scene of Joseph, sitting opposite the Virgin, and holding the Infant in his arms.
Among the few names of mediæval ivory carvers known, are Henry de Grès, in 1391, Héliot, 1390, and Henry de Senlis, in 1484. Héliot is recorded as having produced for Philip the Bold "two large ivory tablets with images, one of which is the... life of Monsieur St. John Baptist." This polite description occurs in the Accounts of Amiot Arnaut, in 1392.
A curious freak of the Gothic period was the making of ivory statuettes of the Virgin, which opened down the centre (like the Iron Maiden of Nüremberg), and disclosed within a series of Scriptural scenes sculptured on the back and on both sides. These images were called Vierges Ouvrantes, and were decidedly more curious than beautiful.
In the British Museum is a specimen of northern work, a basket cut out from the bone of a whale; it is Norse in workmanship, and there is a Runic inscription about the border, which has been thus translated:
"The whale's bones from the fishes' flood
I lifted on Fergen Hill:
He was dashed to death in his gambols
And aground he swam in the shallows."