Ask the Scholar

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 <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, aristocratic clientele.