The Virgin Mary looks tenderly at the squirming Christ Child in her arms. A goldfinch, symbol of Christ’s Passion, is perched on his right hand. Mary’s figure is swathed in heavy drapery, and long tresses of curly hair cascade down her shoulders from beneath a veil that billows behind her. The crescent moon at her feet is rendered as a woman wearing a wimple, a type of veil that partially covers the face. It marks Mary as the woman of the Apocalypse from Saint John’s Revelations (Apocalypse 12:1) and as the Queen of Heaven, a common trope in late-medieval representations of the Virgin Mary.
Although the artist’s identity remains unknown, the carving has many of the stylistic hallmarks of Southern German sculpture, especially the exuberant drapery. The sculpture’s flattened and hollow back indicates that it was designed as part of a larger altarpiece. Placed above altars in churches and chapels, these complex objects could include carved standing figures, sculpted relief panels, and painted narrative panels enclosed by folding wings. The wings were also decorated with sculpted reliefs or paintings, and could be opened and closed at different times of the liturgical year. These artworks were ritual focal points of Christian devotion and therefore fell victim to iconoclasm during the Protestant Reformation, their panels and figures fragmented or destroyed.
