This work is a rare surviving example of medieval sculpture in terracotta—no other Italian examples from the period exist today. The sketchiness of the modeling and the omission of figure of the Christ Child, among other details, suggest that the sculpture was most likely created as a workshop model rather than as a finished piece. It has been proposed that the terracotta was made as a goldsmith's model for the Virgin and Child group intended for the center of an altarpiece. The graceful pose of the Virgin, the rhythmic folds of drapery, and the delicate treatment of her face are consistent with the French-inspired style seen in Tuscany from the middle of the fourteenth century.
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Credit Line:The Cloisters Collection and Rogers Fund, 1998
Accession Number:1998.214
The Virgin sits on a rectangular, terracotta block with her left arm extended from her side as though to accommodate a figure of the Infant Jesus, no longer present, on her lap. Her veiled head tilts towards her left as she gazes in the direction where the child would be; the left hand is missing. While the details of the Virgin’s face are finely rendered, the drapery of her garment and her right hand are sketchily indicated in the manner of a bozzetto. The loose, fluid lines of the Virgin’s pose and the lyrical pattern of the drapery cascading across her body create an elegant sculpture. Scientific analysis of the terracotta conducted in 1997 indicates that the clay was fired 500-900 years prior to that date. When the sculpture first appeared at auction in 1997, the Infant Jesus and the Virgin’s left hand were restored in plaster and the Virgin’s mantle was painted blue. These later additions were removed prior to the Museum’s acquisition of the sculpture and no traces of medieval polychromy survive.
Surviving medieval sculpture in terracotta is extremely rare, and the present work is the only Tuscan example in the material to survive from the period prior to the years around 1400, after which examples appear more frequently. As suggested above, the unfinished quality of the sculpture indicates that it was likely created as a workshop model for a statue in another material, quite possibly a precious material such as silver.
The terracotta Virgin compares closely to the work of the sculptor Goro di Gregorio, who worked in his native Siena, elsewhere in Tuscany, and in Padua and Messina, Sicily. His best known work is the Arca di San Cerbone in the cathedral of Massa Marittima, Tuscany, which was completed in 1324. A marble relief of a saint within a roundel from the Arca is especially close to the terracotta Virgin in its pose and treatment of the drapery. The grace and lyricism found in Goro’s work is indebted at least in part to the influence of Parisian Gothic sculpture, which was closely connected to Sienese art of the fourteenth century (see, for example, the Annunciate Virgin 17.190.739 in The Met’s collection). Goro’s sculpture has been associated with a number of small-scale works in silver and it is possible that the terracotta was the model for a now lost piece of metalwork.
Selected reference:
Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Lisbeth, and Jack Soultanian. Italian Medieval Sculpture in The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Cloisters. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2010. no. 40, pp. 180–185.
Entry by Peter Barnet, curator emeritus, Department of Medieval Art and The Met Cloisters
[2020; adapted from draft Barnet Sculpture Catalogue]
Erich Lederer, Vienna and Geneva (until 1985) ; August Lederer, Geneva (until 1997) ; Sotheby's, London (July 2, 1997, no. 93) ; [ S. Mehringer, Munich (sold 1998)]
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Mirror of the Medieval World," March 9–June 1, 1999.
Wixom, William D., ed. Mirror of the Medieval World. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1999. no. 174, pp. 148–49.
Barnet, Peter, and Nancy Y. Wu. The Cloisters: Medieval Art and Architecture. New York and New Haven: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2005. no. 66, p. 196.
Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Lisbeth, and Jack Soultanian. Italian Medieval Sculpture in The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Cloisters. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2010. no. 40, pp. 180–185.
Barnet, Peter, and Nancy Y. Wu. The Cloisters: Medieval Art and Architecture. 75th Anniversary ed. New York and New Haven: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2012. p. 104.
Le Pogam, Pierre-Yves, and Sophie Jugie. La Sculpture Gothique: 1140-1430. Paris: Hazan, 2020. pp. 50–51, fig. 23.
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