Virgin and Child

In this unusually large ivory sculpture, Mary stands, holding Jesus in the crook of her left arm. She is dressed in costume typical for the sculpture’s thirteenth century date, including a surcoat with a wide collar over a form-fitting gown or kirtle and a ring brooch at her throat. A narrow diadem secures her veil, which falls in thin pleats down her back and on the sides of her face and reveals a band of tightly curled hair around her face. She draws her mantle across her body and under the seated Jesus, producing a series of deep, diagonal folds across her right leg and a cascade of shallow pleats down her left. Mary’s body is narrow and the drapery on the back is rendered as a series of flat pleats. Along with the two dowel holes on the back of the statue and one on the base, these features suggest that the sculpture was originally bolted to a backdrop and pedestal and was meant to be viewed from the front. In its original form it may have resembled statuettes of the Virgin and Child within canopies (see for instance acc. no. 30.95.115). At present, the sculpture retains abundant traces of painted decoration. Paint is visible on Mary’s eyes, hair, and veil, the collar of her surcoat, and in the folds of her mantle. The sculpture appears to have undergone a traumatic event, perhaps a fall, and is heavily damaged. Mary has lost her lower legs and feet and the ivory on the lower part of the sculpture is shattered. Mary’s right arm from the shoulder to the wrist is broken and had been reattached in modern times. The tip of her nose, parts of her veil, and the upper parts of the flower in her right hand are also missing. Jesus has also lost his head, right arm, and the tips of the fingers on his left hand. Jesus’s head and Mary’s crowns were removed as modern elements and are preserved separately.

The arc in Mary’s posture is exceedingly pronounced, an effort to incorporate the curvature of the elephant tusk while representing the twisted posture of a woman holding a child on her hip. Unlike Roman sculptors, who assembled numerous pieces of ivory to make large sculptures (see for instance acc. no. 25.78.43), French sculptors of the fourteenth century carved images of the Virgin and Child from a single ivory slab. In Paris, a major center for the production of ivory sculpture and probable place of origin for the current statue, this practice carried the force of law. A recorded by Étienne Boileau (1226-1270), the guild regulations of Paris, Li Establissement des Mestiers de Paris forbade sculptors to use more than one piece of ivory in their works, except when representing Jesus on the cross. Such restrictions in workshop practices put an upper limit on the scale of an ivory sculpture. Incorporating the curvature of the elephant tusk into Mary’s posture allowed sculptors to push against this constraint and capture some of the monumental presence of contemporary stone sculpture on the facades of cathedrals and prestigious churches. As such, this solution became widespread among French ivory carvers in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries (see for instance V&A inv. no. 4685-1858; 203-1867 Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, Musée Pierre-de-Luxembourg, Inv. PL 86. 3. 1). Given the documentary evidence for restrictions on the assembly of sculptures out of multiple pieces, it is likely that the dowel holes in Jesus’s right hand and neck were made to reattach elements after the sculpture was broken. The hole in Mary’s forehead and the flower stem she has in her hand may, on the contrary, represent a now-lost flower and crown made of silver or gold, an exception to the one-block rule laid down in the bylaws recorded in the Livre de Metiers.

Further Reading:

Elizabeth Sears, "Ivory and Ivory Workshops in Medieval Paris," in Images in Ivory: Precious Objects of the Gothic Age, ed. Peter Barnet (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997): pp. 18-37.


Catalogue Entry by Scott Miller, Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial and Research Collections Specialist, Department of Medieval Art and The Cloisters, 2020–2022

Kann ; [ Galerie A. Imbert, Rome (sold 1911)]; J. Pierpont Morgan (American), London and New York (1911–1913); Estate of J. Pierpont Morgan(1913–1917)

Koechlin, Raymond. Les Ivoires Gothiques Français: Volume I, Text. Paris: Editions Auguste Picard, 1924. no. 109, p. 108 n. 1.

Koechlin, Raymond. Les Ivoires Gothiques Français: Volume II, Catalogue. Paris: Editions Auguste Picard, 1924. no. 109, p. 48.

Seidel, Max. "Die Elfenbeinmadonna im Domschatz zu Pisa." Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 16, no. 1 (1972). p. 9, fig. 5, 7.

Little, Charles T. "Ivoires et art gothique." Revue de l'art 46 (1979). p. 62, fig. 13.

Gaborit-Chopin, Danielle. Ivoires Médiévaux, Ve-XVe siècle. Paris: Musée du Louvre, 2003. pp. 308, 310, fig. 104b.

Hourihane, Colum P., ed. The Grove Encyclopedia of Medieval Art and Architecture. Vol. 3. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. p. 98.