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Source 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. This panel shown here comes from such a casket. This side panel depicts scenes such as Sir Gawain and the Lion and Lancelot crossing the sword bridge. These images suggesting chivalry, fertility, virginity, youth, and an idealized courtly love likely derive from manuscripts including the <em>Roman de la Rose</em> 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 clientele.
Scholar Source Context
Document identity
localId
149382
label
Panel from a Casket with Scenes from Courtly Romances
core
obj
dtoType
object
pageCount
1
Source metadata
id
149382
contentType
object
title
Panel from a Casket with Scenes from Courtly Romances
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. This panel shown here comes from such a casket. This side panel depicts scenes such as Sir Gawain and the Lion and Lancelot crossing the sword bridge. These images suggesting chivalry, fertility, virginity, youth, and an idealized courtly love likely derive from manuscripts including the <em>Roman de la Rose</em> 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 clientele.
date
1330
rights
CC0
rightsUri
CC0
language
en
wikidata
Q60780862
genreSpecific
Ivory
imageCount
1
source
import
dimensionsRaw
Overall: 9.7 x 25.9 x 0.8 cm (3 13/16 x 10 3/16 x 5/16 in.)
cul
France, Lorraine?, Gothic period, 14th century
accession
1978.39.c
Source extras
tec
ivory
tombstone
Panel from a Casket with Scenes from Courtly Romances, 1330. France, Lorraine?, Gothic period, 14th century. Ivory; overall: 9.7 x 25.9 x 0.8 cm (3 13/16 x 10 3/16 x 5/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, John L. Severance Fund, 1978.39.c
collection
MED - Gothic
formerAccessionNumbers
1978.39b
citations
citation
Martin Nagy, Rebecca. Textiles in Daily Life in the Middle Ages. Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland Museum of Art in cooperation with Indiana University Press, 1985.
page_number
p. 48, 60
citation
Wixom, William D. "Eleven Additions to the Medieval Collection." <em>The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art</em> 66, no. 3 (1979).
page_number
p. 87-151
url
www.jstor.org/stable/25159622
citation
Wixom, William. "A Glimpse at the Fountains of the Middle Ages." <em>Cleveland Studies in the History of Art </em>8 (2003): 6-23.
page_number
Mentioned and reproduced: P. 17
citation
Cleveland Museum of Art, and Holger A. Klein.<em> Sacred Gifts and Worldly Treasures: Medieval Masterworks from the Cleveland Museum of Art. </em>Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2007.
page_number
Mentioned and reproduced: P. 188-189, no. 67
creditline
John L. Severance Fund
updatedAt
2026-05-29 07:41:21.693000
sourceId
149382
dept
Medieval Art
coll
MED - Gothic
med
ivory
thumbnail_url
image_url
Single page context
seq
1
pageIndex
0
type
photo
mediaId
ee33e67801f4ad6d