Mirror Back with a Scene of an Elegant Courtly Group in a Garden

Entry

This mirror back belongs to a group of ivories depicting scenes of courtly life. Stylistically, these works are recognizable by the stiff poses of the elegantly dressed figures and the primitive rendering of the vegetation. The landscapes on these ivories are almost childlike, featuring mushroom-shaped trees and characterized by a mechanical-like repetition of flowers and blades of grass. Other notable details are the fine crosshatching on the backgrounds and an ornamental cable motif that consistently frames the edges of the scenes from this group. On a number of these ivories, this decorative border is accompanied by a short French phrase inscribed in gothic Textura lettering. In his standard reference work on French ivories published in 1924, Koechlin described these reliefs as nineteenth-century forgeries, addressing their somewhat primitive appearance.² His conclusion was premature, however, as it failed to adequately address the existence of workshops operating outside the Île-de-France, the epicentre of medieval ivory carving production, whose production was less advanced. Fifteen years after Koechlin, two of the ivories from this group, today preserved in the Louvre and the Walters Art Gallery, were shown to have in fact been drawn by Jan I van Grevenbroeck around the mid-eighteenth century as items preserved in the ‘Museum’ of Pietro di Giacomo Gradenigo in Venice.³ The discovery left no doubt that these ivories, and accordingly the entire group, had been carved prior to this time and were therefore quite plausibly to be classified as late-gothic works.

The discovery that these two ivories were once held in an eighteenth-century Venetian collection was one factor suggesting a northern-Italian origin. In addition, the French-language inscriptions on a number of them and a stylistic agreement with other northern-Italian ivories pointed to a place of production such is Milan or Turin, where French was the language spoken at the various courts. The attribution of these ivories to a northern-Italian workshop has since gained wider acceptance. Randall initially argued a Milanese origin⁴ but later shifted to Savoy as the centre of production.⁵ More recently, the Louvre ivory was again described as Milanese.⁶

The courtly scene on the Amsterdam roundel was perhaps originally encircled by an inscription band. This band was then at some point sawn away, presumably as a result of damage sustained along its edge. A highly similar ivory mirror back preserved in the Wyvern Collection in London still has its original inscription band around the border.⁷ In his discussion of this piece, Williamson rightly observed that the Amsterdam ivory’s size is precisely equivalent to the area of the recessed reverse side of the London mirror back, thus strengthening the earlier suggestion that the two covers once belonged to the same case.⁸ In this case the Amsterdam ivory did not originally include an inscription band. This conclusion is further supported by the marked similarity of the style and the scenes themselves, even if the Amsterdam ivory has suffered substantially more abrasion, resulting in some loss of detail. Compositionally, the two scenes essentially form a symmetrical pair, each comprising three standing figures with a noblewoman in the middle.

The scenes on two other ivory mirror backs in this same group include a gentleman holding a banderole, respectively bearing the words Prenes (Baltimore) and En Gre (Paris), which together form the phrase ‘Take Kindly’, in reference to a line from Christine de Pisan: Prenez en gre le don de votre amant (Take kindly the gift of your lover).⁹ The inscription encircling the London ivory reads Quy byen ayme a tart oublye (Who loves well forgets slowly), a phrase commonly encountered in fourteenth-century romantic lyric poetry, derived from Guillaume de Machaut’s Lai de plour.¹⁰ These inscriptions illustrate the function of such mirror cases when presented as gifts accompanying rites of courting or marriage.

The Amsterdam ivory shows a courtly cortège comprising two men and two women in a landscape setting. The foremost gentleman holds up a rose given to him by the woman standing immediately behind him; she in turn is accompanied by a second woman and a seated harp-player. This scene may very well depict events ensuing from those appearing on the London cover, which shows the same nobleman offering his heart to a similar lady, whose maidservant clasps a rose. The Amsterdam scene therefore appears to suggest that by receiving this token, he has won her love, at which point he proceeds to lead her elsewhere accompanied by harp music: perhaps to dance? In consideration of the inscription on the London half, the case may then perhaps be interpreted as a nobleman’s gift confirming his love to his beloved.

The courtly raiment worn by the figures on both covers provides a solid basis for dating these ivories to the first or second decade of the fifteenth century. The headgear of the two men on the Amsterdam cover – appropriately named ‘bag hats’ – appears in various images from this period, including a dedication miniature with the duke of Burgundy, John the Fearless, made in Paris in 1411-12. The duke also wears the same kind of hat in a small portrait emblazoned on a ring.¹¹ On both ivories, the female figure in the centre, dressed in a long robe with a high waist, is wearing a so-called bourellet, a piece of headwear commonly encountered in Burgundian and Parisian court art, for example, in miniatures and tapestries from the period 1410-1450. The bourellet is also worn by several women in a dedication miniature in the collected work of Christine de Pizan (1364-1431), a book made around 1413 in Paris and presented to Isabella of Bavaria by the poet herself.¹² Other examples include a bronze weeper in the Rijksmuseum (BK-AM-33-H) from the tomb of Isabella of Bourbon, of which the models were made around 1450 in Brussels or Tournai, and numerous female figures depicted in the so-called Devonshire Tapestries, woven around 1440 in Arras or Tournai.¹³

These and countless other artworks, primarily of Franco-Flemish or Burgundian origin, provide ample evidence supporting the interpretation of this group of ivories, including the Amsterdam mirror back, as works produced in the period 1425-50. The strong courtly French-Burgundian character of the scenes on these covers and the French marginal inscriptions fail to support the proposed Italian origin of these works. Williamson presumed the Amsterdam and London ivories, and also the pair in Paris and Baltimore, originated in a French workshop affiliated with the Burgundian court.¹⁴

The Southern Netherlands or northern France, where courtly art rendered in the Franco-Flemish/Burgundian style was produced on a large scale with artists commonly addressing themes of that nature, is perhaps a more probable location for an ivory-carving workshop dedicated to the production of mirror cases in such a readily identifiable style. A Franco-Flemish origin can also be argued on stylistic grounds, including details such as the crosshatched backgrounds and the cable motifs encircling the cases’ periphery. Ornamental leitmotifs of this sort in fact frequently adorn Netherlandish ivories produced in the second half of the fifteenth century (cf. BK-2008-69).¹⁵ Stylistically, these mirror case covers are likewise entirely in line with ivories long viewed as products of workshops in the Low Countries or in the vicinity of the Franco-Flemish border. One work of seminal importance is an ivory relief in Stuttgart that shows the Virgin and Child standing in a landscape, described by Meurer as Netherlandish, possibly Utrecht (fig. a). Here one also observes motifs found on the mirror case covers: the crosshatched background, the cable-motif and the same schematically rendered vegetation.¹⁶ A pierced ivory relief in the Louvre, bearing a scene of the Annunciation, is stylistically related to the aforementioned works, including a rather remarkable mushroom-shaped tree similar to those on the ivory mirror case covers.¹⁷ Also belonging to this group are the cover of a round case with the Annunciation and the border inscription Mater Dei in the British Museum and several small diptychs bearing dual scenes of the Annunciation and the Crucifixion, preserved in Oxford and elsewhere.¹⁸ Lastly, three paxes and two combs can be added to the same group based on their similar style and facture.¹⁹ Considering the figures’ attire, the mirror back would appear to have been made in the early stages of this Franco-Flemish production, with the majority of ivories from this corpus datable to the second half of the fifteenth or even the early sixteenth century, consisting of minnekistjes (courtship caskets), combs and game boards in addition to paxes and small altars.²⁰

That ivory-carvers were active in these regions to the north is confirmed, for example, by the existence of a tailleur d’yvoire from Tournai, active in the late fourteenth century: one Pierart Aubert, whose workshop inventory was bequeathed to a cousin working in Paris as a ymagier d’ivoire in 1408.²¹ Additional research is necessary in order to confirm the Franco-Flemish origin of these courtly ivories and possibly to establish the precise location of the workshop(s) where they were produced.

Frits Scholten, 2024