Virgin and Child

Impressive for its scale and superb technique, the Virgin and Child is one of the finest examples of Goan silver sculpture to have survived from the seventeenth century. It is comprised of three separate parts – the base, Virgin Mary, and Christ Child – made from a combination of cast, repoussé, and chased silver elements. Produced by highly skilled Indian silversmiths for wealthy Portuguese clients during the expansion of the Catholic Church and Portuguese colonial state into Asia, the Virgin and Child exemplifies the distinctive formal style connected to the Jesuit Religious Houses in Goa, India. The presence of Jesuits in Goa, beginning with the arrival of Francis Xavier in 1542, coincided with the proliferation of imagery of the Mother of God in Catholic territories during the Counter-Reformation.




Hieratic but graceful, the Virgin Mary stands atop a crescent moon. Her right arm supports the Christ child who has one arm raised in blessing and the other outstretched. A threaded hole in the Virgin’s right hand indicates she held a missing attribute, possibly a rosary or frond. Sculptures made from precious metals such as gold and silver, sometimes embellished with semi-precious stones, materialized the sacred nature of the subject.




Prior to the arrival of the Portuguese, Indian silversmiths honed their skill producing images of local Hindu deities for royal patrons. Shifting their production to suit Portuguese patronage, Goan artisans relied on European imagery made available to them through imported prints, textiles, sculptures, and paintings, onto which they layered their own stylistic variations. Working under Portuguese direction, they nonetheless imprinted their culture onto the sculpture, manifesting a rich and distinctive characterization of the subject. The fusion of European and Indian attributes is the result of the meeting of two disparate cultures during the height of Portuguese missionary activities on the Indian subcontinent and compelling evidence of the direct contributions of Goan artisans to the codification of Catholic imagery during the Counter-Reformation.