The Virgin and Child

CultureGerman

Dateca. 1520

MediumWood with paint and gilding

DimensionsOverall: 57 1/2 × 19 × 11 1/2 inches (146.05 × 48.26 × 29.21 cm)

Credit LinePurchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust

Object number31-107

On View

On view

Gallery Location

Collections

European Art

Terms

DescriptionThe Madonna with long flowing hair and golden robe and mantle, holds the naked Child on her left arm and his feet in her right hand. The crescent of the moon can be seen under the folds of her robe. Of linden wood, the back hollowed out. Original paint and gold. Some restoration of the gold design on the Madonna's robe and also on the Child and the right hand of the Virgin.Exhibition History

Exhibition History

N/A

Gallery Label

Here the Christ Child holds in one hand a fruit variously identified as an apple, the symbol of Man's fall in the Garden of Eden, or as a pomegranate, which represents fertility and resurrection. The Virgin stands on a slender crescent moon and thus she is identified as the Woman of the Apocalypse, the celestial being whom John the Evangelist saw in the heavens while he, on the island of Patmos, received inspiration for the Book of Revelation. The deep and very angular folds of the Virgin's drapery are hallmarks of the late Gothic style, but both figures have normative, naturalistic bodies and facial features which suggest that the sculptor had been exposed to Humanist culture and Renaissance style.

Provenance

Marczell von Nemes (1866-1930), Munich, by 1930;

Purchased at his posthumous sale, Sammlung Marczell von Nemes, Frederik Müller and Co., Paul Cassirer and Hugo Helbing, Munich, June 16-19, 1931, lot 362, through Harold Woodbury Parsons, by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1931.

Published References

Sammlung Marczell von Nemes; Versteigerung im Auftrage der Testamentsvollstrecker des Nachlasses (Munich: Hugo Helbing, June 16-19, 1931), 23, as Maria mit dem Kinde.

“Gallery Masterpiece of the Month,” Kansas City Star 7 (December 6, 1936): 45-46, (repro.), as Madonna and Child, clipping, scrapbook, NAMA Archives.

The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, The William Rockhill Nelson Collection, 3^rd ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1949), 112, (repro.), as Madonna with the Child Jesus.

Gallery Tour Booklet for Docents (NAMA Dept. of Education, August 1969), 48, as Madonna and Child.

Marilyn Stokstad, “Romanesque and Gothic Art,” Apollo 96, no. 130 (December 1972): 489-90, (repro.), as Virgin and Child [repr. in Denys Sutton, ed., William Rockhill Nelson Gallery, Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City (London: Apollo Magazine, 1972), 489-90].

Ross E. Taggart and George L. McKenna, eds., Handbook of the Collections in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, vol. 1, Art of the Occident, 5^th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1973), 70, (repro.), as Virgin and Child.

Roger Ward and Patricia J. Fidler, eds., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection (New York: Hudson Hills Press, in association with Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993).

Dorothy Gillerman, ed., Gothic Sculpture in America, vol. 2, The Museums of the Midwest (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2001), 218-19, (repro.), as Virgin and Child on the Crescent Moon.

Deborah Emont Scott, ed., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection, 7th ed. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2008), 52, (repro.), as The Virgin and Child.

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