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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.

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Page
1
Source index
0
Type
photo
Media ID
4663ec263220c7e2
Size
unknown

Document data

ID
149381
Core
obj
Type
object
DTO data
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    "id": "149381",
    "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. 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.",
    "date": "1330–1350 or later",
    "citation": "https://clevelandart.org/art/1978.39.b",
    "rights": "CC0",
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    "language": "en",
    "wikidata": [
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    ],
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    "largeImageUrl": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1978.39.b/1978.39.b_web.jpg",
    "imageCount": 1,
    "source": "import",
    "dimensionsRaw": "Overall: 9.8 x 25.9 x 1 cm (3 7/8 x 10 3/16 x 3/8 in.)",
    "cul": [
        "France, Lorraine?, Gothic period, 14th century"
    ],
    "accession": "1978.39.b"
}

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Document identity
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    "localId": "149381",
    "label": "Panel from a Casket with Scenes from Courtly Romances",
    "core": "obj",
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}
Document source metadata
{
    "id": "149381",
    "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. 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.",
    "date": "1330–1350 or later",
    "citation": "https://clevelandart.org/art/1978.39.b",
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    "largeImageUrl": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1978.39.b/1978.39.b_web.jpg",
    "imageCount": 1,
    "source": "import",
    "dimensionsRaw": "Overall: 9.8 x 25.9 x 1 cm (3 7/8 x 10 3/16 x 3/8 in.)",
    "cul": [
        "France, Lorraine?, Gothic period, 14th century"
    ],
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}
Document source extras
{
    "tec": "ivory",
    "tombstone": "Panel from a Casket with Scenes from Courtly Romances, 1330–1350 or later. 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.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, John L. Severance Fund, 1978.39.b",
    "collection": "MED - Gothic",
    "formerAccessionNumbers": [
        "1978.39a"
    ],
    "citations": [
        {
            "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": "pp. 87-151",
            "url": "www.jstor.org/stable/25159622"
        },
        {
            "citation": "Kathman, Barbara A. <em>A Cleveland Bestiary</em>. Cleveland, OH; Cleveland Museum of Art, 1981.",
            "page_number": "Reproduced: p. 2, p. 13; Mentioned: p. 13, p. 60"
        },
        {
            "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. \"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",
            "url": "https://www.jstor.org/stable/20079727"
        },
        {
            "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"
        },
        {
            "citation": "Cohen, Meredith. \"The Bestiary beyond the Book.\" In <em>Book of Beasts: The Bestiary in the Medieval World</em>. Elizabeth Morrison and Larisa Grollemond, eds. pp. 177 - 225. Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2019.",
            "page_number": "Mentioned and reproduced: p. 214, cat. 63"
        },
        {
            "citation": "Mikolic, Amanda. <em>Hunting for a Unicorn Horn: Narwhal Tusks in Medieval Monsters</em>. The Cleveland Museum of Art The Thinker Blog on Medium, September 6, 2019.",
            "url": "https://medium.com/cma-thinker/hunting-for-a-unicorn-horn-narwhal-tusks-in-medieval-monsters-1455c03fb529"
        },
        {
            "citation": "Kopp, Vanina, and Elizabeth Lapina. <em>Games and Visual Culture in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance</em>. 2020.",
            "page_number": "pp. 226-227"
        },
        {
            "citation": "Brenker, Fabian. Turniere und Lanzenspiele: in Bildern aus dem Mittelalter und der frühen Neuzeit : Orte, Auftraggeber und soziale Funktionen. <br>Petersberg : Michael Imhof Verlag, 2021.",
            "page_number": "Mentioned: p. 248"
        }
    ],
    "url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/1978.39.b",
    "creditline": "John L. Severance Fund",
    "updatedAt": "2026-05-29 07:41:21.661000",
    "imageUrl": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1978.39.b/1978.39.b_print.jpg",
    "sourceId": 149381,
    "dept": "Medieval Art",
    "coll": "MED - Gothic",
    "med": "ivory",
    "thumbnail_url": null,
    "image_url": null
}
Page context
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