This is an ivory statuette of the Virgin and Child (Virgo Lactans) made probably in Eastern France, in the second quarter of the fourteenth century. The Virgin, crowned, wearing an ample mantle, is seated feeding the Child. The right hand of the Child is chipped.
This Virgo Lactans may be compared with three other ivories of he same subject and about the same size, one in the Musée de Cluny in Paris, another in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the third previously in the Alsdorf collection and sold at Sotheby's in New York. Their broad faces and the solid construction of the present sculpture may indicate non-Parisian origin, although the fall of the drapery in a deep V-fold between the knees of the Virgin clearly derives from Parisian models of the early fourteenth century. The striking similarity of the four pieces points to a common prototype.
Three dimensional images of the Virgin and Child were ubiquitous from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries, produced in a wide range of materials and sizes and testifying the overwhelming devotion to th Virgin. Together with the Crucifixion, statues and statuettes of the Virgin and Child were the pricipal objects of devotion in the Christian Church, and vast numbers were made for ecclesisastical, monastic and private worship.