Exceptional memento mori in sculpted and engraved ivory. On one side the busts of a couple of lovers in sixteenth-century costume and on the other side a half-figure representing a skeleton holding a shovel. Dimensions: 75 mm, (without the pedestal), weight: 70 grams. This article comes with CITES form 2025/BE04124/CE and can be sold only inside the EU
It is only fairly recently that certain rosary beads have been linked to a Parisian ivory sculptor and merchant, Chicart Bailly, who worked from 1485 until 1533. Among the production of these small devotional objects, known as vanitas objects, a number of them share common characteristics, including the rather macabre depiction of skulls adorned with worms, toads, and lizards, and the frequent presence of inscriptions in vernacular French from the early Renaissance. The connection of these works, made in France, to the production of Bailly's workshop was made possible by the discovery of a post-mortem inventory of ""l'homme honorable Chicart Bailly, bourgeois de Paris et marchand tabletier,"" preserved in the National Archives (Minutes de Guillaume Payen, 1533).
Provenance:
Canon Felix Vercruyssen (+1952). Lit. The Ivory Mirror: The Art of Mortality in Renaissance Europe, Bowdoin College of Art, S. Perkinson, Brunswick, 2017. J. LOWDEN & J. CHERRY. Medieval Ivories and works of Art, The Thomson Collection, Art Gallery of Ontario, 2008
