The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School College of Arts and Architecture TACTILE PLEASURES: SECULAR GOTHIC IVORY A Dissertation in Art History by Katherine Elisabeth Staab © 2014 Katherine Elisabeth Staab Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy December 2014 ii The dissertation of Katherine Elisabeth Staab was reviewed and approved* by the following: Elizabeth Bradford Smith Associate Professor of Art History Dissertation Adviser Chair of Committee Brian Curran Professor of Art History Charlotte M. Houghton Associate Professor of Art History Kathryn Salzer Assistant Professor of History Craig Zabel Associate Professor of Art History Head of the Department of Art History *Signatures are on file in the Graduate School. iii ABSTRACT This study approaches secular Gothic ivory mirror cases from the fourteenth century. Even more specifically, it considers scenes of so-called “romance” or “courtly” couples, which were often given as love pledges and used as engagement presents.1 There has been a recent flourishing of art historical interest in materiality and visual culture, focusing on the production, distribution, consumption, and significance of objects in everyday life, and my examination adds to that body of work.2 My purpose is not to provide a survey, history, or chronology of these objects, but rather to highlight one important, yet little-studied aspect. My dissertation situates the sensation of touch in the context of a wider understanding of the relationship between the object and the human body,3 with specific secular Gothic ivories as case studies.4 I investigate, 1 I first encountered these themes in Danielle Gaborit-Chopin, Ivoires médiévaux: Ve-XVe siècle (Paris: Editions de la Réunion des musées nationaux, 2003), 268–9; which lead me to Brigitte Buettner, “Circular Arguments (The Mirror and the Vamp),” in Gothic Ivories: Art in the Private Sphere II, Session 110 (presented at the Thirty-Second International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI, 1997), 8–9; as well as Elizabeth Sears, “Ivory and Ivory Workers in Medieval Paris,” in Images in Ivory: Precious Objects of the Gothic Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 18–37; and Robert G. Calkins, Monuments of Medieval Art (New York: Dutton, 1979), 193–8. 2 Recent examples of studies of medieval material culture include (most other studies focus on the Renaissance): Henk Van Os, The Art of Devotion in the Late Middle Ages in Europe, 1300- 1500 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994); Roberta Gilchrist, Gender and Material Culture: The Archaeology of Religious Women (London: Routledge, 1994); Roberta Gilchrist, “Medieval Bodies in the Material World: Gender, Stigma and the Body,” in Framing Medieval Bodies, ed. Sarah Kay and Miri Rubin (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), 43–61; Michael Camille, The Medieval Art of Love: Objects and Subjects of Desire (New York: Abrams, 1998); Eamon Duffy, “The End of It All: The Material Culture of the Medieval English Parish and the 1552 Inventories of Church Goods,” in The Parish in Late Medieval England: Proceedings of the 2002 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. Clive Burgess and Eamon Duffy (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2006), 381–99; Sarah Stanbury, The Visual Object of Desire in Late Medieval England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008); and Monica L. Wright, Weaving Narrative: Clothing in Twelfth-Century French Romance (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009). 3 The body is where perception occurs, see Mary J. Carruthers, ed., The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 56–8; iv through the imagery and physical evidence, the ways in which these objects inform and are informed by tactile exploration. The size, material, and subjects of these ivories both encouraged and rewarded close study and touching. Secular Gothic ivory appealed to the sense of touch and Gothic people touched and were inclined to think about touch when looking at and holding these objects. The repetition in ivory decoration of men and women looking, touching, and offering themselves as objects to be looked at and touched suggests to me that these individuals were seeing surrogate selves represented in ivory. Ideally, the reader comes away with an appreciation for the role of the sense of touch in experiencing art.5 see also Dolores Warwick Frese and Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffee, eds., The Book and the Body (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997); and Michael Camille, “Before the Gaze: The Internal Senses and Late Medieval Visuality,” in Visuality Before and Beyond the Renaissance: Seeing as Others Saw, ed. Robert S. Nelson (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 211. 4 Much in the same way that Marina Belozerskaya, Luxury Arts of the Renaissance (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2005), focused on what are considered the “decorative” arts, and through her study provided a deeper, richer understanding of the culture of the Renaissance; the recent interest in materiality and visual culture in art history, particularly in the study of the Renaissance (examples include: Creighton E. Gilbert, “What Did the Renaissance Patron Buy?,” Renaissance Quarterly 51, no. 2 [Summer 1998]: 392–450; and Evelyn Welch, Shopping in the Renaissance: Consumer Cultures in Italy 1400-1600 [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005]) has opened up new areas for exploration, particularly in relation to the significance of objects in everyday life. 5 An underlying goal, which will be evident from perusing the footnotes, is to provide a wide variety of sources to the reader. v TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures ................................................................................................................................ vi Preface........................................................................................................................................... vii A Note on the Photography ................................................................................................................................... vii A Note on the Labels ............................................................................................................................................. vii Acknowledgments........................................................................................................................ viii Chapter 1: Introduction: Tactile Pleasures ...................................................................................... 1 Chapter 2: Gothic Life and Thought ............................................................................................. 31 The Senses .............................................................................................................................................................. 47 The Vices: Sinning through Touch ......................................................................................................................... 55 (Private) Devotion, Prayer, and Love ..................................................................................................................... 59 Chapter 3: Ivory Terminology ...................................................................................................... 71 Biblical.................................................................................................................................................................... 71 Classical .................................................................................................................................................................. 73 Courtly/Love Literature/Romances ........................................................................................................................ 76 Chapter 4: Secular Gothic Ivory ................................................................................................... 83 Background: Secular Gothic Art ............................................................................................................................. 83 Secular Gothic Ivory ............................................................................................................................................... 84 Patrons of Secular Gothic Ivory ......................................................................................................................... 88 Gothic Artists, Guilds, Ateliers, and Merchants ................................................................................................ 95 Gothic Gift Culture ............................................................................................................................................ 97 Ivory Objects as Gifts ...................................................................................................................................... 100 Chapter 5: Touching [and] Secular Gothic Ivory ....................................................................... 103 Ovid’s Gradus Amoris, Touch, and Ivory............................................................................................................. 104 Visus: Sight Leading to Lust and Hope ........................................................................................................... 108 Accessit, alloquium, blandimentum: Approaching, Speaking with, and Flattering the Lover ......................... 111 Tactus: Making Contact with the Lover