French, Paris
From the West Facade of Notre-Dame Cathedral
Head of an Apostle, c.1210
Limestone, traces of polychromy
H: 43 cm (17 in.)
Kate S. Buckingham Endowment, 1944.413
Medieval to Modern European Painting and Sculpture
Not on Display
Exhibition, Publication and Ownership Histories
Exhibition History
Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Arts of the Middle Ages,” 17 February – 24 March 1940, cat. 175.
Cleveland Museum of Art, Treasures from Medieval France, 15 November 1966 - 29 January 1967, cat. IV, 1.
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, “The Year 1200,” 12 February – 10 May 1970, cat. 15.
Moscow, State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Decorative-Applied Art from Late Antiquity to the Late Gothic Style, 14 May - 14 July 1990, and the Hermitage Museum, Leningrad, 14 August - 14 October 1990, cat. 37.
The Art Institute of Chicago, Devotion and Splendor: Medieval Art at the Art Institute of Chicago, September 25, 2004-January 3, 2005, cat. 18.
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Set in Stone: The Face in Medieval Sculpture, 26 September, 2006-February 18, 2007, cat. 14.
Publication History
Art Digest, “Boston Museum Opens Magnificent Exhibition of Medieval Art,” The Art Digest 14, 10 (February 15, 1940), p. 6, frontispiece.
Art Institute of Chicago, “Great Medieval Art for Chicago,” The Art Institute of Chicago: The Year 1944 (1945), p. 4.
Art News, “New Life to the Middle Ages: Chicago's Recent Purchases,” Art News 44, 1 (1945), pp. 20, 22 (ill.).
Meyric R. Rogers and Oswald Goetz, Handbook to the Lucy Maud Buckingham Medieval Collection (Chicago, 1945), p. 62, no. 6, pls. 10, 11, frontispiece.
Meyric R. Rogers, “The Rehabilitation of the Lucy Maud Buckingham Medieval Collection,” Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago 39, 3 (March 1945), p. 36, frontispiece.
Antiques, “Additions to the Buckingham Medieval Collection,” Antiques 47, 4 (April 1945), p. 236.
American Correspondent, “Medieval Sculpture in the Buckingham Collection,” The Connoisseur 120, 505 (September 1947), pp. 53–54, no. 7.
Art Institute of Chicago, An Illustrated Guide to the Collections of the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, 1948), pp. 14–15 (ill.).
Art Institute of Chicago, An Illustrated Guide to the Collections of the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, 1950), p. 18 (ill.).
Charles Fabens Kelley, “Chicago: Record Years,” Art News 51, 4 (June - August 1952), p. 107 (ill.).
Art Institute of Chicago, “A New Setting for the Medieval Collection,” Art Institute of Chicago Quarterly 53, 1 (February 1959), p. 8, ill. opp. p. 8.
William D. Wixom, “Art Treasures from Medieval France - at Cleveland,” The Connoisseur 164, 659 (January 1967), pp. 58, 62.
Eleanor S. Greenhill, “The Provenance of a Gothic Head,” Art Bulletin 49, 2 (June 1967), pp. 101–09, figs. 1–7.
Francis Salet, “Chronique, Une tête gothique du musée de Chicago,” Bulletin Monumental 126, 2 (1968), pp. 190–92.
Léon Pressouyre, “Sculptures retrouvées de la Cathédrale de Sens,” Bulletin Monumental 127, 2 (1969), pp. 117–18, fig. 21.
Walter Cahn, “Exhibition Reviews: The Year 1200,” Art Quarterly 33, 3 (1970), p. 300.
John Maxon, The Art Institute of Chicago (London, 1970), pp. 221–22.
Louis Grodecki, "L’an 1200,” L’Oeil 185 (May 1970), pp. 8, 54.
Willibald Sauerländer, “Exhibition Review: The Year 1200, A Centennial Exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art,” Art Bulletin 53, 4 (December 1971), pp. 507–08.
Willibald Sauerländer, Gothic Sculpture in France, 1140–1270, translated by J. Sondheimer (New York, 1972), p. 453, fig. 74.
Peter Cornelius Claussen, “Antike und Gotische Skulptur in Frankreich um 1200,” Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch 35 (1973), p. 93, fig. 9.
Alan G. Artner, “A Score of Treasures,” Chicago Tribune (April 4, 1979), sec. 9, p. 10.
Dorothy Gillerman, ed., Gothic Sculpture in America, Publications of the International Center of Medieval Art 4, 2 (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2001), pp. 9–11, no. 7.
Ownership History
Originally sculpted for the west facade of Notre-Dame Cathedral. Found during excavation of Boulevard Haussmann at the crossing of Boulevard Malesherbes, Paris, 1852 [according to an undated description by Jacob Hirsch in curatorial file]. Stored in the basement of Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris, until 1900 [according to Artner 1979]. Jacob Hirsch, New York, by 1940 [see Art Digest 1940 and MFA Boston 1940 exh. cat.]; sold to the Art Institute, 1944.