IVORY CARVINGS 49 



may have owed much to instruction or example of Moorish 

 artists although their designs were of course very different. 



A special class of triptychs, of which a great number were 

 produced by the medieval and Renaissance ivory carvers, 

 have on the central panel or leaf the figure of the Virgin with 

 three angels, two of whom bear tapers, while the third is 

 placing a crown on the Virgin's head; on the side leaves are 

 depicted scenes from her life. Sometimes, when the figure of 

 the Virgin is not carved in relief, but has the form of a statu- 

 ette beneath a canopy, there are four leaves instead of three 

 only as in the triptych proper. Occasionally, in the more 

 elaborate works of this type, the central leaf bears a repre- 

 sentation of the Crucifixion or the Last Judgment.* 



Among the many valuable medieval ivories in the J. P. 

 Morgan collection, for some time exhibited in the Metro- 

 politan Museum of Art, New York, may be noted a statuette 

 of the Virgin and Child, the work of a French carver of the 

 fourteenth century. The mother, enthroned, while gazing 

 down fondly upon her son, holds up in her extended hand a 

 small bunch of lilies, toward which the Divine Child stretches 

 forth its hand. Both in expression and execution this work 

 ranks among the very best products of this period, when the 

 art of religious ivory carving stood at its highest point. 

 The French art of the fourteenth century is also shown at 

 its best in the reliefs of a diptych acquired by Mr. Morgan 

 from the Hoentschel Collection. Here each leaf is divided 

 into four longitudinal sections, those on the upper half 

 offering representations of the flagellation of Christ, the 

 Crucifixion, the Resurrection, and the Coronation of the 

 Virgin, while the four lower sections figure the Annunciation, 

 the Nativity, the Adoration of the Magi, and the Pres- 



*Dalton, "Catalogue of the ivory carvings of the Christian era and carvings in bone in 

 the Department of British and Medieval Archaeology and Ethnology in the British Mu- 

 seum," London, 1909, p. 95; see PI. LVIU (No. 266) ; French, 14th cent. 



