Artwork Page for Panel from a Casket with Scenes from Courtly Romances

Details / Information for Panel from a Casket with Scenes from Courtly Romances

Panel from a Casket with Scenes from Courtly Romances

c. 1330–50 or later
Medium
ivory
Measurements
Overall: 13 x 26.2 x 1 cm (5 1/8 x 10 5/16 x 3/8 in.)
Credit Line
Public Domain
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Did You Know?

Two knights in mail surcoats and helms joust here with blunted lances "for courtesy," a version of the joust known as the Joust of Peace.

Description

Among the most lavish and deluxe products of French ivory workshops of the 1300s were large caskets carved with elaborate scenes drawn from courtly romances. The panel shown here comes from such a casket. The largest panel (here) once formed the lid and depicts a tournament, the most splendid and romantic of knightly activities. Just to the right is a favorite allegory of chivalric love: knights assaulting the castle of love. These images suggesting chivalry, fertility, virginity, youth, and an idealized courtly love likely derive from manuscripts including the Roman de la Rose and the poems of Chrétien de Troyes. Such texts were often found within the libraries of the aristocracy, so the casket’s symbolic images would have been readily understood. Such caskets may have originally been gifts between a man and a woman. The expense of the material, ivory, suggests they were produced for an elite, aristocratic clientele.
A horizontally oriented rectangular ivory carving is divided into four vertical sections by three twisted columns. Spectators fill a long balcony spanning the top. Centrally, two armored knights joust on horseback. To our left, a tower rises above a couple riding a horse, and three figures sit in a boat below. To our right, figures scale a wall using a ladder and a catapult. Intricate figures fill the entire panel.

Panel from a Casket with Scenes from Courtly Romances

c. 1330–50 or later

France, Lorraine?, Gothic period, 14th century

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