Seated Virgin and Child; Virgin holding Christ with both hands; Christ seated on the Virgin's left knee; Christ holding a fruit in his left hand.
Randall 1993: France (Paris), last quarter of the 13th century.
Apollo 1999: France (Paris), c. 1260-c. 1280.
Barnet 2008: France (Paris), c. 1250-1260.
Museum's opinion 2011: France (Paris), c. 1260-1280.
Attribution
Unknown
Polychromy - Gilding
Traces of polychromy and gilding.
Reverse
Carved in the round.
Object Condition
Missing: head of Christ.
Comments
This statuette is very close to the Saint-Denis Virgin (Cincinnati (Ohio), Taft Museum).
Provenance
Jules Lowengard, Paris; Duveen brothers, Paris: bought from them in 1907 by Archer M. Huntington, as the central ornament of a custodia by Cristobal Becerril from the Church of San Juan in Alarcon (made for Gaspar de Quiroga, bishop of Cuenca in 1585): bought by 1906 for the Hispanic Society of America, New York (inventory number: D 754) founded by Huntington in 1904; bought from the Hispanic Society of America in 1999 thanks to the Michel David-Weill Gift for the The Cloisters Collection.
Bibliography
B. I Gilman, Catalogue of Sculpture (New York, 1932), p. 7.
Hispanic Society of America Handbook (New York, 1938), p. 65.
C. T. Little and T. B. Husband, Europe in the Middle Ages, exhibition catalogue, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1987, p. 96, fig. 88.
R. H. Randall, The Golden Age of Ivory: Gothic Ivory Carvings in North American Collections (New York, 1993), no. 5.
Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Recent Acquisitions: A Selection (Fall 1999), p. 17.
'A Selection of 1999 Museum Acquisitions', in Apollo, CL, 454 (December 1999).
C. T. Little, 'The Art of Ivory in the Time of Philippe le Bel: Innovation and Constancy', in 1300, l'Art au temps de Philippe le Bel: actes du colloque international, Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, 24 et 25 juin 1998 (Paris, 2001, pp. 75-88, fig. 2.
P. Barnet and N. Wu, The Cloisters: Medieval Art and Architecture (New York, 2005), no. 46, p. 81 (with ill.).
M. Grandmontagne, Claus Sluter und die Lesbarkeit mittelalterlicher Skulptur: Das Portal der Kartause von Champmol (Worms, 2005), p. 479.
P. Barnet, 'Recent Acquisitions (1999-2008) of Medieval Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Cloisters, New York', in The Burlington Magazine 150 (2008), pp. 793-800 (p. 796, fig. VIII).
S. Guérin, 'An ivory Virgin at the Metropolitan Museum, New York, in a Gothic sculptor's oeuvre', in The Burlington Magazine 1311, Vol. CLIV (June 2012), pp. 394-402, figs. 8, 9, 15, 16, 18.
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