Lot n° 1
Estimation :
12000 - 15000
EUR
Result without fees
Result
: 16 000EUR
CATALAN school, Comminges, second half of the 13th century - Lot 1
CATALAN school, Comminges, second half of the 13th century
Seated Virgin and Child, also known as Virgin in Majesty
Wall carving in walnut wood, hollowed-out reverse, minimal traces of polychromy in the hollows.
H.49,5 L. 23,5 cm
Restoration (right forearm of the Virgin), later addition of the cross on the globe, missing polychromy. Accidents and missing pieces.
A report of carbon 14 dating analysis carried out by the CIRAM laboratory will be given to the buyer.
RELATED LITERATURE :
Under the direction of MP Subes and J.-B. Mathon, Vierges à l'Enfant médiévales de Catalogne, mises en perspectives ; suivi du corpus des Vierges à l'enfant (XIIe-XVe s.) des Pyrénées Orientales, PU de Perpignan, 2013
- Nicole Andrieu, "Les Vierges en Comminges, inventaire, étude et restauration", in Vierges à l'Enfant médiévales de Catalogne, op. cit, pp. 95-103.
RELATED WORKS:
Virgin and Child, polychrome wood, H. 100 cm, Basilica of Saint-Just de Valcabrère. Virgin and Child, 14th century, polychromed wood, H. 91 cm, Oratory of Bordères-Louron.
This graceful and hieratic Virgin and Child seated in a frontal position derives from an iconographic type of Virgin in majesty inaugurated in the middle of the 12th century on the south portal of the western façade of Chartres Cathedral. Also known as Sedes Sapientiae, or "throne of wisdom", this type of seated Virgin and Child responds to the message of the Romanesque period spread in the litanies of the Virgin, considering the body of the Virgin "as a throne on which sits the Wisdom of the Father". The image symbolizes both the mystery of the Incarnation and the essential role of the Virgin in the history of Salvation. This iconographic formula was very successful throughout France and especially in Catalonia from the following century. Its diffusion then continued in an era of advanced Gothic art that was extremely successful.
Our work is part of a particular family known as the "Commingois Virgins", according to the terminology established by Victor Allègre to describe the Virgins with the Child holding, in a very graceful gesture of the right hand, a sphere identified with an apple. The Virgins in this group depart from the strict hieraticism of the Romanesque style by presenting beautiful proportions, harmonious posture and gestures, and a slightly smiling Virgin's face. They also present, as here, the child Jesus sitting on the left knee of the Virgin in a slightly oblique position. All of them wear the same dress with a rounded, finely pleated neckline held at the waist by a belt, a supple mantle over the shoulders passing under the front of the Virgin's right arm and falling in a wide flattened area over the knees. Above all, the shape of the drapery spreading over the right knee draws a wide arch in which the pleats spread out on both sides in delicate and parallel waves, just like on the tunic of the crowned Child Jesus and originally blessing with his right hand. Finally, the end of the cloak falls on the right-hand pillar of the throne, which is shown only as a simple stool. This simplification of the throne of Wisdom is still in keeping with the mentality of the Romanesque period, which gave the Virgin's body the sacred status of the throne itself. Our work was therefore made in the 13th century by a workshop that worked in the Eastern Pyrenees and was inspired by the "smiling" Gothic style of the 13th century while remaining attached to the Romanesque type. Thus it is similar to the Virgins of Garin, Billière, Saint-Aventin, Ore or Valcabrère in Haute-Garonne, which present the same elements of a particular elegance, just as, in the Hautes-Pyrénées, the Virgins of Mont or Bordères-Louron.
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