Virgin and Child from the Sainte-Chapelle [SEP] material used
Virgin and Child from the Sainte-Chapelle
The Virgin and Child from the Sainte-Chapelle is an ivory sculpture probably created in the 1260s, currently in the possession of the Louvre Museum in Paris. The museum itself describes it as "unquestionably the most beautiful piece of ronde-bosse [in the round] ivory carving ever made", and the finest individual work of art in the wave of ivory sculpture coming out of Paris in the 13th and 14th centuries.
History.
After a relative shortage of ivory
religious scenes that used the same relief technique; these and smaller secular objects such as mirror-cases are more common than these caskets, or larger religious statues like the "Virgin and Child from the Sainte-Chapelle" of the 1260s. The composite caskets differ slightly from each other, but are sufficiently similar to suggest they all originated from one Paris workshop, or group of workshops, around 1330 to 1350.
This casket may well have been a gift of courtship or upon marriage, and was probably intended for an