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Kimbell Art Museum
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'When I saw this work for the first time, it would not allow me to leave the room. The cleverness of the composition, the quality of the carving, the translucid quality of alabaster, the polychrome surface and the pristine state of conservation of the piece literally forced me to stop in my tracks. This French Virgin and Child is a sculpture without an artist’s name: their memory has been lost to history. Dealing in Western art, we often desire and obsess with names to give meaning to artworks, but on some occasions, this is not needed, and the importance of the work transcends any fixation with biography.'
This wonderful sculpture is a remarkable example of a particular school of early Renaissance France. Yet, its study illuminates figurative trends from other regions while also revealing more enchanting details after each new encounter.
The present statue of the Virgin and Child achieves all this. Executed by a leading artist in the French city of Troyes – a master from the so-called atelier de Saint-Léger – it ranks among the best images produced in southern Champagne in the sixteenth century. While it subscribes to an established figurative tradition, the sculpture updates its ‘Gothic’ models in an original way, proposing a fascinating alternative to the Italian influences that characterised the artistic production of the region from the 1530s onward. As such, it represents an outstanding example of this figurative language in the early French Renaissance.
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Master from the Atelier de Saint-Léger
French, Troyes
Virgin and Child
c. 1530-1535
Alabaster with traces of gilding
94 x 24.4 x 22 cm
PROVENANCE
- Levaillant collection, Paris, by 1900
- Gavin Astor, 2nd Baron Astor of Hever (1918-1984), Hever Castle, near Edenbridge, Kent; his sale (London, Christie’s, April 21, 1982, lot 149, illus. p. 61)
- Private collection, UK
- London, Christie’s, December 8, 1987, lot 104, illus. pp. 48-49, acquired by
- Private collection, USA
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