Virgin and Child

Public Domain

1240/50

Northern France

This seated Virgin and Child was carved in the middle of the 13th century, a time when private devotional practices became increasingly popular. In bedchambers or in small oratories, private domestic spaces set aside for prayer, images like this would have served as focal points for prayer and meditation. During the High Middle Ages, the Virgin was revered as a powerful intercessor between humanity and Christ. At the same time, she was also worshipped as the Queen of Heaven. Although the Virgin’s crown has been damaged and the gesture of her right hand is no longer clear, the figure group combines austere majesty and tenderness.

Status: On View, Gallery 236
Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe

Title: Virgin and Child
Place: France (Object made in)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1235–1255
Medium: Ivory
Dimensions: 22.4 × 9.5 cm (8 7/8 × 3 3/4 in.)
Credit Line: Kate S. Buckingham Endowment
Reference Number: 1971.786
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/37398/manifest.json

Raymond Koechlin, Les Ivoires gothiques français (Paris, 1924), vol. 2, p. 5, no. 11; vol. 3, no. 11 (ill. Plate IV bis).
Times of London, “Homberg Collection: End of Paris Sale,” Times of London (6 June 1931).
Louis Grodecki, Ivoires français (Paris, 1947), p. 82, pl. 21.
Hermann Schnitzler, Peter Bloch, Charles Ratton, and Fritz Volbach, Mittelalterliche Elfenbein-und Emailkunst aus der Sammlung E. und M. Kofler-Truniger (Düsseldorf, 1965), p. 17, no. S 31.
Robert Suckale, Studien zu Stilbildung und Stilwandel der Madonnenstatuen der Ile-de-France zwischen 1230 und 1300, doctoral dissertation (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, 1971), pp. 70-72, 86–87.
Max Seidel, “Die Elfenbeinmadonna im Domschatz zu Pisa,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Instituts in Florenz 16 (1972), pp. 28–29, 50, fig. 31 (reprinted and updated in Max Seidel, Arte italiana del Medioevo e del Rinascimento, vol. 2: Architettura e Scultura, Venice, 2003, pp. 368-69, 285 n. 73, 338, fig. 31).
Art Institute of Chicago, Art Institute of Chicago Annual Report 1971–72 (Chicago, 1973), p. 44, inside front cover (ill.).
William H. Monroe, “A French Gothic Ivory of the Virgin and Child,” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 9 (1978), pp. 7–29.
Charles T. Little, “Ivoires et art gothique,” Revue de l’art 46 (1979). pp. 59, 66.
Richard H. Randall, Jr., The Golden Age of Ivory: Gothic Carvings in North American Collections (New York, 1993), pp. 16–17, 34, pl. 1, no. 1.
Johannes Tripps, “Giovanni Pisano e l’influsso francese sulla scultura in Italia” in Il Gotico europeo in Italia, ed. Valentino Pace and Martina Bagnoli (Naples, 1994), pp. 142, 151, fig. 4.
Danielle Gaborit-Chopin, “Gothic, VII: Ivories” in Dictionary of Art, vol. 13 (London, 1996), p. 172.
Paul Williamson, “Symbiosis across Scale: Gothic Ivories and Sculpture in Stone and Wood in the Thirteenth Century” in Images in Ivory: Precious Objects of the Gothic Age, ed. Peter Barnet, exh. cat. Detroit Institute of Arts, 1997), p. 41.
Danielle Gaborit-Chopin, “Paris ou Amiens? Le Groupe de la Vierge Davillier,” in Études d’histoire de l’art offertes à Jacques Thirion, eds. Alain Erlande-Brandenburg and Jean-Michel Leniaud (Paris, 2001), pp. 85-98.
Danielle Gaborit-Chopin, Musée du Louvre, Département des objets d’art. Catalogue, Ivoires médiévaux, Ve-XVe siècle (Paris, 2003), p. 276, fig. 93a, under no. 93.
Sarah M. Guérin, “‘Tears of Compunction’: French Gothic Ivories in Devotional Practice” PhD. dissertation, University of Toronto, 2009, pp. 73, 134-40, fig. 1-12.
Gothic Ivories Project, The Courtauld Institute of Arts:
http://gothicivories.courtauld.ac.uk/

Zurich, Kunsthaus, Sammlung E. und M. Kofler-Truniger, 7 June – 2 August 1964, cat. S 31.
Aachen, Suermondt-Museum, Mittelalterliche Elfenbein-und Emailkunst aus der Sammlung E. und M. Kofler-Truniger, Luzern, 1965, cat. S 31.
Art Institute of Chicago, Medieval Decorative Arts from Chicago Collections, 2 October 1985 – 5 January 1986, no. 9.
Leningrad, State Hermitage Museum, and Moscow, State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Medieval Art from The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Art Institute of Chicago, May 10–July 10, 1990, August 14–October 14, 1990, no. 38.
Detroit Institute of Arts, Images in Ivory: Precious Objects of the Gothic Age, 9 March – 11 May 1997, and the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore, 22 June – 31 August 1997, cat. 2.

Octave Homberg (d. 1907), Paris [see Koechlin 1924]; by descent to his son, Octave Homberg, Paris [see source cited above]; sold, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 3-5 June 1931, lot 128, to M. Brimo [see Times of London 1931]. Private collection, Paris, by 1947 [see Grodecki 1947]. Ernst and Marthe Kofler-Truniger, Lucerne, by 1964 [see Zurich 1964 exh. cat.]. Blumka Gallery, New York, by 1971; sold to the Art Institute, 1971.

Koechlin 11

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

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