This small wooden devotional sculpture retains traces of its original polychrome finish. Contrasting with the flesh areas on the faces of the Madonna and Child, the rest of the surface must have been completely gilded originally, imitating the goldsmith’s craft. A small groove in Mary’s head suggests that it once bore a metal crown, and the hollow in the back of the figure is a compartment for relics whose little door is missing.

The mother looks tenderly at her son while he plays with a little bird that is pecking at his hand. This detail, possibly taken from mid-fourteenth-century French sculpture, is a reference to the Eucharist: the bird, a symbol of the human soul, feeds on Christ’s blood to attain spiritual resurrection. These types of sculptures, of which there are several examples, have been linked to the Friesentor Madonna (Museum Schnütgen, Cologne) that once adorned an eponymous gate in the city wall, demolished in 1882.

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The Virgin and the Child. Anónimo ALEMÁN activo hacia 1380-1390
The Virgin and Child
Anonymous German artist

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Thyssen-Bornemisza Collections. Photo: © Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

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