French Gothic ivories: material theologies and the sculptor's craft

Abstract

"A snapshot of the extent of the northern European economic sphere appears in a manuscript miscellany formerly at Notre-Dame in Paris (BnF, MS fr. 25545). It contains one of the earliest copies of Marie de France's Ysopet , a copy of Richard de Fournival's Bestiaire d'amour, the popular romance of the Chatelaine de Vergi , numerous bawdy fabliaux, a political poem railing against the monetary policy of Philippe le Bel, a list of fish (!), and a unique text describing "Li roiaume et les terres desquex les marchandises viennent a Bruges" (The kingdoms and lands from which merchandise comes to Bruges). Olivier Collet and Jean Rychner suggest that this manuscript, completed before 1316, was compiled for a literate, bourgeois merchant in Tournai.4 Two folios (18v-19r) list Bruges's thirty-four trading partners, including locales nearby (England, Sweden, Germany), far away (Russia, Portugal, al-Andalus), and on the limits of the known world (China, Sijilmasa, Sudan). Similarly, goods coming from these regions range from the mundane to the exotic: cheese, leather, and coal are named alongside cloth of gold, rice, and sugar (still rare in European cuisine), brazilwood, cotton, and "all spices" (toute espicerie). This short anonymous text exalts the exceptional quality and variety of merchandise available in Flanders: "For this is why no other country can compare with the merchandise available in Flanders.""-- Provided by publisher.

Contents

Ivory in the Gothic Emporium -- Thrones of Wisdom: The First Gothic Ivories -- "Fleshly tablets of the heart": The Passion in Ivory -- Glorification of the Virgin: Ivory Palaces and the Assumption -- Contemplation and Desire: Ivories for the Domestic Sphere -- An Ivory Enterprise: The Yvoirier of the Saint-Sulpice Triptych, 1280-1310 -- Epilogue: Gothic Ivories as a Capetian Art.