Seated Virgin

In the 14th century, the practice of private devotion was encouraged by Devotio Moderna, a religious movement that arose in present-day Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands. The widely read De Imitatione Christi (The Imitation of Christ), by the German-born Dutch canon Thomas à Kempis, offered instructions for developing a spiritual life anchored on one’s personal relationship with God. Devotional practice was thus no longer confined to the liturgy but was supplemented with private prayer. To facilitate such practice, prayer books, small diptychs, and statuettes of the Virgin and Child and the crucified Christ were frequently produced in various corners of Europe. As private devotion remained a crucial component of Christian spirituality, objects such as the ones displayed here were produced even through the 20th century. The ivory statuettes displayed here were made in Europe from African elephant tusks.They evince the enduring tradition of using ivory carvings for private devotion that can be traced to the late Middle Ages. Delicate, warm, and soft to the touch, ivory statuettes of the crucified Christ and the Virgin and Child remained coveted objects in the 17th and 18th centuries. Probably made in Spain during the 17th century, the highly detailed statuette of the crucified Christ dramatically presents the figure in a state of intense pain and suffering through the pronounced neck muscles, the deep incisions in his upward directed pupils, and wide open mouth. Designed to evoke a celestial dimension, the fragment of the Virgin would have originally been joined to a figure of the Christ Child on a cloud. Ivory carvings of this motif were adaptations of contemporaneous painting in northern Italy. [group label: 1983.32, 1922.79]