Sculpted ivory relief. France. Gothic. Third quarter of the 14th century.

Sculpted ivory relief. France. Gothic. Third quarter of the 14th century.
The left part of an ivory diptych sculpted in high relief, depicting the Madonna and Child between Saint Catherine of Alexandria and Saint John the Baptist.
Mary holds the Child on her left arm, and her right hand would have been holding a bunch of fleur de de lys, which is incomplete; the saints are accompanied by their respective attributes, Saint Catherine with the wheel and the palm of the martyr, and Saint John with the lamb.
The characters are depicted as standing beneath a gothic arcade crowned with motifs in the shape of clover leaves and flowery pinnacles.
As Danielle Gaborit-Chopin points out, in the Louvre Museum’s catalogue of ivories, “The depiction of the Virgin Mary between two saints is not frequent in gothic ivories.”
The Louvre Museum keeps two examples comparable to ours, a left door, similar to our relief, and the lid of a box. (Inventory nº 11195 y 9355)
Koechlin, in turn, also distinguishes this unusual iconography, and not one of the five small plaques that he mentions shows the Virgin Mary between two saints.
Reference bibliography: R. Koechlin, Les Ivoires gothiques français, T.II, Paris, 1968, pp 223 to 225; D. Gaborit-Chopin, Ivoires médiévaux Ve-XVe siècle, Musée du Louvre. Paris, 2003.
8,6 x 5 cm.