Virgin and Child
Artist
Unknown
Datecirca 1250–1270
MediumElephant ivory with traces of blue paint, metal
Dimensionsheight, width, and depth: 12 × 3 3/8 × 2 1/8 in. (30.5 × 8.6 × 5.4 cm)
ClassificationsSculpture
Credit LineGift of Mrs. Edsel B. Ford in memory of W. R. Valentiner
Object numberG.59.6.1
On View
On viewPublished ReferencesRaymond Koechlin, Ivoires gothiques. Collection Émile Baboin. Catalogue. (Lyon: A Rey, 1912), no. 23 (La Vièrge et l'enfant; dates it to the beginning of the 13th century). Note, our sculpture bears Baboin inventory sticker “23” on the reverse. ILL’d 1/14/20
Raymond Koechlin, Les Ivoires Gothiques Français, 3 vols. (Paris: Editions Auguste Picard, 1924), vol. 1, p. 108; II, no. 110 (dates it to the end of the first third of the 13th century)
"Gifts Presented to the North Carolina Museum of Art in Memory of W. R. Valentiner," North Carolina Museum of Art Bulletin 3 (1959), listed 46.
Masterpieces of Art: In Memory of William R. Valentiner, 1880–1958 (exhibition catalogue) (Raleigh: North Carolina Museum of Art, 1959), cat. no. 99, illus. (b-w) 161, fig. 99.
First Presbyterian News 5, no. 4 (December 1962), illus. cover.
Exhibition Number One from the Permanent Collection (exhibition catalogue) (Raleigh: North Carolina Museum of Art, 1970), 8, illus. (color) 9.
A Medieval Treasury from Southeastern Collections (exhibition catalogue), Jaroslav Folda and John M. Schnorrenberg, eds. (Chapel Hill: William Hayes Ackland Memorial Art Center, 1971), cat. no. 32, illus.
Max Seidel, “Die Elfenbeinmadonna im Domschatz zu Pisa,” in Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 16 (1972), pp. 1–50, p. 24 and p. 25 fig. 26, a photograph from the estate of Raymond Koechlin which shows the statuette without its crown (our sculpture represents a type that might have been the model for Giovanni Pisano’s ivory Virgin in the treasury of Pisa Cathedral).
Little, Charles T. "Ivories et art gothique," Revue de l'art 46 (1979), 58–67 at 63–64, 67 n. 47.
Edgar Peters Bowron, Introduction to the Collections (Chapel Hill: published for the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, by The University of North Carolina Press, 1983), illus. (b-w) 142.
Richard H. Randall, Jr., “The Ivory Virgin of St. Denis,” Apollo 128 (December 1988), 320–22; (related) 394–452.
Introduction to the Collections, rev. ed. (Raleigh: North Carolina Museum of Art, 1992), illus. (b-w) 122.
Richard H. Randall, Jr., The Golden Age of Ivory: Gothic Carvings in North American Collections (New York: Hudson Hill Press, Inc., 1993), p. 34, no. 2 (as 1250–1270).
Richard H. Randall in Images in Ivory: Precious Objects of the Gothic Age, ed. Peter Barnet (Detroit: Detroit Institute of Arts in association with Princeton University Press, 1997), 127.
Rebecca Martin Nagy, entry for Madonna and Child, in North Carolina Museum of Art: Handbook of the Collections, Rebecca Martin Nagy, ed. (Raleigh: North Carolina Museum of Art, 1998), 69, 71, illus. (color) 71.
Rebecca Martin Nagy, entry for Madonna and Child, in North Carolina Museum of Art: Handbook of the Collections, rev. ed. (Raleigh: North Carolina Museum of Art, 2010), 154, illus. (color) 155.
Kai Hohenfeld, Die Madonnenskulpturen des Giovanni Pisano (Weimar: Verlag und Datenbank für Geisteswissenschaften, 2014), 30, 82–84, 133, 248, illus. (b-w) 294, fig. 13.
Gothic Ivories Project at the Cortauld Institute of Art, London, http://www.gothicivories.courtauld.ac.uk
NCMA ivory at http://www.gothicivories.courtauld.ac.uk/images/ivory/D5439FAF_5c571d98.html [accessed 30 December 2019]
Exhibition HistoryRaleigh, NC, North Carolina Museum of Art, "The Madonna and Child Theme in Art," November 15- December 29, 1957.
Raleigh, NC, North Carolina Museum of Art, "Masterpieces of Art: In Memory of William R. Valentiner, 1880-1958," April 6-May 7, 1959, cat. no. 99, illus. (b-w).
Raleigh, NC, North Carolina Museum of Art, "Exhibition Number One from the Permanent Collection," October 1970, 8, illus. (color) 9.
Chapel Hill, NC, The William Hayes Ackland Memorial Art Center, UNC, "A Medieval Treasury from Southeastern Collections," April 4-May 21, 1971, cat. no. 32.
Raleigh, NC, North Carolina Museum of Art, "The People's Collection, Reimagined," October 7, 2022–present. Object Rights Statement
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