(5) #IBMakingArt

Enthroned Virgin and Child

Date: ca. 1300
Medium: Elephant Ivory
Size: 10 3/4 x 5 5/16 x 3 3/4 in
Artist: unknown

This piece is called the Enthroned Virgin and Child. It was most likely made in London, England around 1300 A.D. Around this time, an Oxford scholar named John Wycliffe translated the Bible from Latin to English. This caused chaos in the church because previously, only trained priests had been able to read and interpret the Bible. Now, anyone could read it and communicate with God, which created an intellectual movement that was harshly suppressed. This particular statuette was from a time when the cult of the Virgin was at its peak. These statuettes were used as personal devotional objects for members of the cult.

This sculpture is meant to depict the Virgin Mary with her baby Jesus. Although the infant part of the piece is now missing, it was supposed to show the relationship between mother and child, with Mary's face turned to face the baby.

This statue, though less than even a foot tall, is very detailed. The artist has managed to carve the fabric of Mary's clothes in a way that seems to mimic what the movement and falling of the material would realistically look like. The baby itself is no longer attached, but a few toes and a whole leg and foot can be seen on the right side of the picture (left side of the statue).

I could not make sense of that portion of the sculpture at first. (As you can see, my sketch cuts off before the bottom because I couldn't figure out how to draw it.) The baby's toes are there but the shading in the photo made it hard to decipher unless it was zoomed in very far. The color of the statue now is not the color it always was. Now, it is a reddish-brownish color, likely from staining with a substance such as walnut oil. The statue is made of ivory, meaning it originally would have been a whitish color. Since white is meant to represent purity, this could have )intentionally or unintentionally) represented Mary's purity, both in her virgin status and her bearing of the Holy child. Over time, as the color has changed and the piece has become less ideal or valuable, as has the ideology that went with it. The cult of the Virgin is no longer as popular or desirable as it used to be, similar to the tainted ivory.

This piece very obviously displays religious values. The literal depiction is of characters from the Bible- the Holy child and the virgin who birthed him. They are described as "enthroned" in the title as well; meaning they are being placed above the rest, in a position to look down upon others and to, more importantly, be seen as higher (as in higher power). In addition, the piece was meant to be used for personal devotion to a cult dedicated to the aforementioned virgin. Devotion, in this case, would likely mean prayer or some personal way of connecting oneself to a higher power, in this case God. This piece could also reflect social values in addition to religious values because of the ivory and the social/religious connotation with the color white. It is not unlikely that a group that worshipped a virgin also valued purity and virginity.







(Note from later: there were some formatting issues when I originally published this post and it made it highlighted and odd and illegible. I couldn't figure out how to fix it so I just redid the post-same content, different post. Started from scratch and retyped the whole thing. So it has a different date but it's the same post I promise. You can just actually read it now.)