French, Normandy, First half 14th century

This seated Virgin holds a lily-scepter in her proper left hand and supports the Christ Child with her right. She wears wears a belted gown under an open mantle, the edges of which are decorated with cavities that would have held jewels made from colored glass. The Christ Child stands on her lap, raising his proper left hand in blessing. The head of the Virgin, her garments, and the execution of her drapery are all consistent with examples of the present subject that were carved in Northern France during the first half of the 14^th century.

While many of the Virgin and Child groups produced in France in the Gothic period possess more familial and tender poses, the front-facing and slightly formal postures of the figures in this group, and especially of the Christ Child, who stands in his mother’s lap, evoke the sedes sapientiae, or Throne of Wisdom, a representation of the Virgin and Child typical of the Romanesque period, an example of which is the gilded and polychromed wood Virgin and Child in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (acc. No. 59.701) that was carved in France circa 1210-1225. While the sedes sapientiae was more typical of the Romanesque period, the present limestone virgin can be compared to other contemporaneous French sculptures, such as the Virgin and Child given in 1334 to a newly constructed chapel in the Cathédrale Saint-Étienne de Sens, which remains in situ today.¹

¹Gillerman, p. 18.