The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of November 29, 2023

Panel from a Casket with Scenes from Courtly Romances

1330–1350 or later

Part of a set. See all set records

France, Lorraine?, Gothic period, 14th century

Ivory

Overall: 9.8 x 25.9 x 1 cm (3 7/8 x 10 3/16 x 3/8 in.)

John L. Severance Fund 1978.39.b

Location

106C Medieval Treasury

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. This side panel depicts scenes such as the fountain of youth and the unicorn hunt. 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.

Citations
Wixom, William D. "Eleven Additions to the Medieval Collection." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 66, no. 3 (1979). pp. 87-151 www.jstor.org
Kathman, Barbara A. A Cleveland Bestiary. Cleveland, OH; Cleveland Museum of Art, 1981. Reproduced: p. 2, p. 13; Mentioned: p. 13, p. 60
Martin Nagy, Rebecca. Textiles in Daily Life in the Middle Ages. Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland Museum of Art in cooperation with Indiana University Press, 1985. p. 48, 60
Wixom, William. "A Glimpse at the Fountains of the Middle Ages." Cleveland Studies in the History of Art 8 (2003): 6-23. Mentioned and reproduced: P. 17 www.jstor.org
Cleveland Museum of Art, and Holger A. Klein. Sacred Gifts and Worldly Treasures: Medieval Masterworks from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2007. Mentioned and reproduced: P. 188-189, no. 67
Cohen, Meredith. "The Bestiary beyond the Book." In Book of Beasts: The Bestiary in the Medieval World. Elizabeth Morrison and Larisa Grollemond, eds. pp. 177 - 225. Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2019. Mentioned and reproduced: p. 214, cat. 63
Mikolic, Amanda. Hunting for a Unicorn Horn: Narwhal Tusks in Medieval Monsters. The Cleveland Museum of Art The Thinker Blog on Medium, September 6, 2019. medium.com
Kopp, Vanina, and Elizabeth Lapina. Games and Visual Culture in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. 2020. pp. 226-227
Brenker, Fabian. Turniere und Lanzenspiele: in Bildern aus dem Mittelalter und der frühen Neuzeit : Orte, Auftraggeber und soziale Funktionen.
Petersberg : Michael Imhof Verlag, 2021. Mentioned: p. 248
Exhibition history

Textiles in Daily Life in the Middle Ages. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 22-March 17, 1985).

Sacred Gifts and Worldly Treasures: Medieval Masterworks from the Cleveland Museum of Art. National Museum of Bavaria, Munich, Germany (May 10-September 16, 2007); J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA (October 30, 2007-January 20, 2008); Frist Art Museum, Nashville, TN (February 13-June 7, 2009).

The Book of Beasts: The Bestiary in the Medieval World. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA (organizer) (May 14-August 18, 2019).

Source URL: https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1978.39.b