60 IVORY AND THE ELEPHANT 



the Virgin and Child of a Franco-Flemish artist who worked 

 in the fourteenth or the beginning of the fifteenth cen- 

 tury. This highly characteristic work, in the Louvre Mu- 

 seum, shows a high degree of technical skill on the part 

 of the carver, and we must admit the effectiveness of the 

 child figure's pose, the ardent appetite testified to by the 

 spasmodically lifted foot; however, this can hardly help 

 to bring out the religious and sacred meaning of the subject, 

 neither can we find in the insignificant though pretty face 

 of the Virgin any trace of nobility or dignity. The whole 

 composition is "of the earth earthy." 



Several representative examples of Italian and Flemish 

 ivory carving were disposed of in February, 1865, in Paris, 

 at the sale of the collection of Comte de Pourtales-Gor- 

 gier.* One of these was a statuette of Hercules, 20 in. in 

 height, attributed to the celebrated Italian sculptor, Gio- 

 vanni da Bologna. The work may perhaps have been exe- 

 cuted by the sculptor's father, also named Giovanni, who is 

 said by Benvenuto Cellini to have been an ivory carver of 

 repute.f This statuette brought the sum of 16,400 francs. 

 Two other fine specimens, believed to have been carved by 

 F. Flamand (Frangois Duquesnoy), were a group of Venus 

 and Cupid, said to have been left in pawn by the artist in 

 the house in Livorno wherein he died, and a bas-relief frieze 

 figuring the Triumph of Silenus; they were sold for 5,900 

 francs and 13,100 francs respectively. 



Three of the finest examples of saddles decorated with 

 ivory plates sculptured in relief are in the National Museum 

 at Budapest, Hungary. One of them came from the treas- 

 ury of the archiepiscopal Cathedral of Bucharest and another 

 belonged to the Batthyany family in Kis Berum. They are 



*"Catalogue des objets d'art . . . qui composent les collections de feu M. le Comte de 

 Pourtales-Gorgier," Paris, 1865. 



tChristian Scherer, " Elf enbeinplastik seit der Renaissance," Leipzig, 1902, p. 8. 



