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  • Enthroned Virgin and Child

Enthroned Virgin and Child, ca. 1300
England (probably London)
Elephant ivory; 10 3/4 x 5 5/16 x 3 3/4 in. (27.3 x 13.5 x 9.6 cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Cloisters Collection, 1979 (1979.402)

Curator Comment

This sculpture, long hidden from view, belongs to a large series of Gothic ivory statuettes of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Most were produced in and around Paris, where elephant ivory was plentiful; only a few examples, of which this is the finest, can be considered English. This statuette was intended as a small-scale devotional object perhaps for a chapel or a small oratory, as seen in contemporary illuminated manuscripts. The fragment of the Christ Child's leg on the Virgin's left knee suggests that he was standing in her lap. This active pose and the Virgin's sweet gaze characterize the intimate and tender images that emerged during this period, when the cult of the Virgin was at its height.

Peter Barnet, Michel David-Weill Curator in Charge, Department of Medieval Art and The Cloisters

Provenance

[G. J. Demotte, Paris and New York, 1928]; Mr. and Mrs. John Hunt, Drumleck Baily, Dublin, Ireland (1931–79); [Howard Ricketts, London, 1979].

Bibliography

William D. Wixom, "Virgin and Child," in Notable Acquisitions, 1979–1980 (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1980), pp. 22–23; William D. Wixom, "Medieval Sculpture: At The Cloisters," The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 46, no. 3 (Winter 1988–89), p. 61; William D. Wixom, ed., Mirror of the Medieval World (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1999), pp. 119–21, cat. no. 142; Peter Barnet and Nancy Wu, The Cloisters: Medieval Art and Architecture (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2005), p. 83, cat. no. 48.

Related Links

Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History