AGO's Medieval Ivories in London
Courtauld Institute Exhibits Works from Art Gallery of Ontario
"Medieval Ivories from the Thomson Collection" at London's Courtauld Institute of Art features religious and secular artworks from the European Middle Ages.
Medieval Ivories from the Thomson Collection at London's Courtauld Gallery, Somerset House (January 10-March 8, 2008) displays some 45 European religious and secular objects, many carved from imported African elephant tusk. They were recently donated to Toronto's Art Gallery of Ontario, closed for renovation and expansion by American architect Frank Gehry (b. 1929).
Lord Thomson and His Collection
Canadian billionaire Kenneth Thomson, Lord of Fleet and Northbridge (1923-2006), owned media conglomerate Thomson Corporation. He began collecting art in 1953 during a trip to Bournemouth, England. In 2002, Thomson donated 2000 works to the Art Gallery of Ontario, eventually to be installed in three new sets of galleries. He also pledged $60 million to the museum's rebuilding campaign.
Medieval Ivories from the Thomson Collection
The late Lord Thomson's collection abounds in high-quality medieval ivories:
- large statuettes of the Virgin and Child from chapel altars;
- smaller versions intended for private devotion;
- diptychs (two-panel compositions) illustrating episodes from Christ's life; and
- objects for domestic use and personal adornment (e.g., writing tablets, boxes, dining utensils, mirrors, beads and combs).
Religious Works of Art
Last displayed in 1913, the Dormeuil Diptych (1350-1375) illustrates the Passion of Christ. This largest known example of the subject in two-panel format (24.7 x 31.4 cm when open) was most likely produced in the Workshop of the Passion Diptychs, a 14th-century Parisian atelier known for its exquisitely carved ivories. It was acquired at Sotheby's Paris for the late philathropist's collection on November 19, 2007 at the record-breaking price of $6.6 million.
The exhibition's controversial objet d'art is the Gothic Nativity and Last Judgement Diptych (12th or 13th Century). Its second panel features intricately carved deceased souls resurrecting from their graves beneath a majestically seated Christ flanked by two beatific angels. The anonymous artisan's astonishing craftsmanship deceived modern experts, having caused them to dismiss the work as a 19th-century neo-Gothic forgery. Recent carbon-14 testing in British and French laboratories has since validated the ivory's age.
Medieval Mirth and Mortality
The story of daily life in the Late Middle Ages is set against the backdrop of three major phenomena: the Hundred Years' War (1337-1453); the Black Death's plagues that began to ravage Europe in 1347; and a spiritual malaise and administrative crisis within the Catholic Church that culminated in the 16th-century Protestant Reformation. These circumstances' societal effects resonate in many late-medieval works of art.
The Thomson Collection's Parisian silver Mirror (ca. 1325-1375) features four monsters mounted along its circular ivory rim. Each faces the direction in which the object's cover has to be twisted to free its bayonet mount for opening. Medieval society's order is inverted on the mirror's carved back as its lower half depicts three ladies uncommonly astride stallions, hunting with their birds. According to one intrepretation, the men in the vignette's upper region act as servants or, by implication, the women's prey.
The exhibition's most disturbing piece is a South Netherlandish two-faced Bead (ca. 1500-1525). One side depicts a pensive female; the other is the benign subject's frightening worm-eaten skull. Around the sculpture's forehead is a foreboding French inscription: AINSI SERONS NOUS WI OU DEMAIN (So shall we be, today or tomorrow). The 6.6-cm-high bead's ominous iconography or symbolism was profoundly influenced by the Black Death's decimation of the European populace. This graphically gruesome memento mori was a stark reminder of life's transience during a time of pestilence's unpredictable outbreaks and sporadic war.
Above all else, the Thomson Collection's ivories demonstrate that in the relatively pious Middle Ages, mundane considerations influenced the spiritual realm as seen in works of art produced during Europe's medieval millennium.
Sources:
- Huizinga, Johan. The Waning of the Middle Ages. New York: Dover Publications, 1998.
- Husband, Timothy B., et al. The Secular Spirit: Life and Art at the End of the Middle Ages (exh. cat.). New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1975.
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