Book cover, God the Father with Evangelist Symbols, Paris, early fifteenth century

This is an ivory relief made in Paris in the early fifteenth century. The relief was probably set into the cover of a gospel book, with a gilded foil behind it. The general format of the composition, albeit not with a lozenge, follows Romanesque and earlier ivory book-cover plaques of Christ in Majesty with the four Evangelist symbols, but here Christ's place is taken by God the Father.

The latter is shown increasingly often in the years around 1400 in Paris. Plaque or panel of a book-cover depicting God the Father enthroned on a curule throne with dogs' (?) heads, crowned with a triple crown. He wears a papal tiara, cross stole and morse and is nimbed. His feet upon the rainbow of the cosmos and its personification, holding the orb with a cross in His left hand, and raising His right hand in benediction. In the corners formed by the lozenge are the symbols of the four Evangelists, holding scrolls.

In the possession of John Webb, London, by 1862 (London, 1862, cat. no. 90); purchased from Webb in 1867 for £20.