Ladies using mirrors at their toilet frequently form a subject for illustration in fourteenth century manuscripts. These mirrors are precisely of the usual shape and size of those which have come down to us in ivory. Several may be seen in the manuscript romance of Lancelot du Lac in the British museum: in one, a lady lying on a couch holds the mirror in her hand whilst an attendant dresses her hair with a comb; in another, she herself uses both mirror and comb. A hundred years later the same design was engraved on one of a pack of cards, “la damoiselle,” by “the Master of 1466,” now in the national library at Paris.
Love scenes, as in the etching, or the siege of the castle of Love are subjects often found on mirror cases. The woodcut on this page is copied from an example at South Kensington, no. 1617. Another copy of the same romance of Lancelot, which has been just referred to, has an illumination of a real assault upon a castle, treated in a similar manner. Knights place ladders against the wall; the battlements are defended by the garrison; the attack is made with cross-bows and a catapult; and men lie dead upon the ground. Another of much interest is given as “the twelfth battle” in the manuscript in the British museum so well known as queen Mary’s psalter, written about the year 1320; in this, women look at the attack over the battlements of the town or castle.
IVORY CARVING. CIRCULAR MIRROR COVER.
DATE 1300-1330. (SOLTIKOFF COLL.) DIAM 5½ in.
2.K.M (No 210.65)D. JONES FECIT.