Exceptional memento mori in carved and engraved... - Lot 29 - Pierre Bergé & Associés

Lot 29
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Estimation :
20000 - 30000 EUR
Result with fees
Result : 44 200EUR
Exceptional memento mori in carved and engraved... - Lot 29 - Pierre Bergé & Associés
Exceptional memento mori in carved and engraved ivory with red highlights. Skull inhabited by batrachians and reptiles, two salamanders and a toad on the top, a reptile in each orbit, two lizards and a frog on the lower jaw, a batrachian escaping from the half-opened mouth; inscription on the forehead ECCE FINEM (Here is the end); on the reverse, a Crucifixion between the Virgin and St. John, hands joined, a bone resting on the ground; below, the monogram of Christ ihs in a shield. Paris, attributed to Chicart Bailly, circa 1480/90 Height: 6.7 cm - Width: 3.7 cm - Depth: 4.7 cm - Weight: 90 g (minor old restorations) Works consulted: J. Lowden and J. Cherry, Medieval Ivories and Works of Art, The Thomson Collection, Art Gallery of Ontario, 2008, cat.45 ; Exhibition Brunswick 2017, The Ivory Mirror: The Art of Mortality in Renaissance Europe, Bowdoin College Museum of Art, S. Perkinson, cat. Pl. 34, 35 and 36. It is only fairly recently that some of the two- and three-sided rosary beads have been linked to a Parisian ivory carver and merchant, Chicart Bailly, who worked from the last decades of the fifteenth century to the first third of the next. In the production of these small devotional objects, known as vanitas, a certain number of them can be grouped together with common characteristics such as the rather macabre figuration of skulls decorated with worms, toads and lizards and the presence very often of inscriptions in the French vernacular at the beginning of the Renaissance. The connection of these works made in France with the production of Bailly's workshop was made possible by the discovery of an inventory after the death of "the honourable man Chicart Bailly, bourgeois de Paris et marchand tabletier" kept in the National Archives (Minutes of Guillaume Payen, 1533). This inventory sheds light on the activity of this sculptor, who was mentioned as a master in 1485 and died in 1533, and who specialised in working with ivory, bone and precious woods. Many objects have been inventoried after his death, combs, buckles among others, but especially an impressive number of rosaries and ivory beads of "patrenostres". This memento mori, of unusual size, probably belongs to the first productions of the ivory worker. The subject of the Crucifixion, hitherto unpublished in this field, is still a Gothic theme and is interpreted as if it were in the 15th century. The Latin language of the inscription - not French - seems to confirm this hypothesis. The use of red highlights to make the characters stand out - as shown by the Christ monogram engraved below - is a common practice among Chicart Bailly.
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