In medieval Europe, images were commonly used to inspire piety, prayer, and a closer relationship with God. This depiction of the Madonna and Child, a rare example of a lime wood sculpture that has retained its original paint and gilding, represents a vision described in the New Testament book of Revelation, "A great, a wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head." Polychrome sculptures (an object decorated in many colors) were intended to look as life-like as possible. This realism helped church members relate to the figures of Mary and the Christ child in a personal way. They also believed that the figures acted as intercessors to God. Later sculptures, popular in the medieval period, included fewer colors and relied more on detailed carving to portray realistic images.
While today’s viewers experience this work in a well-lit gallery, the sculpture would originally have been placed in a dimly-lit gothic cathedral during the 14th century. The bright colors and shimmering gold on the robes and crown were designed to be seen in candlelight or indirect sunlight. To keep such sculptures looking bright, they were periodically repainted and re-gilded. After cleaning this sculpture, conservators discovered that, over the years, it has been painted with up to six different color schemes. In contrast to her brightly colored robes, the Mary holds a rosy, naked baby Jesus, who seems ready to wriggle out of his mother's arms.
Mary’s hair has been carved in long waving ringlets that flow down on either side of her robe with its realistic folds of fabric cinched together, as if with a drawstring. This sculpture's distinctive carving style reveals it as a product of the workshop of Niclaus Weckmann the Elder. Here, Mary is depicted in a relaxed, naturalistic pose as she cradles the Christ child and gazes out toward the viewer. The highly skilled carving technique is evident in the detailed facial expressions, Mary’s cascading hair, Christ’s curls, and especially in the folds of Mary’s robe and collar. The lime wood used to create the sculpture was believed to hold holy powers that would help to scare away the plague.
The directness of her gaze, contrasted with the Christ child who looks out into the distance, makes Mary the primary focus of the work, Mary is rendered in luxurious, rich colors, with heavy gold highlights that would have glowed in candlelight, ornate drapery, and the symbolic crown on her head and moon at her feet. Mary was often depicted in either red, which represented nobility and elevated status and was the favored color of German artists for their renderings of Mary, or blue, traditionally the color of purity but also associated with nobility and high status. In Byzantine culture, blue was the color of an empress, thus the color was popularly associated with the Virgin Mary as the “Queen of Heaven.” The color blue used in medieval painting was derived from lapis lazuli—a stone of high value comparable to gold at the time. Hence, the use of blue was an expression of devotion and glorification, as well as a not-too-subtle expression of the patron’s wealth.
