”VIRGIN WITH CHILD ON THE THRONE”. BOXWOOD, BRONZE AND ROCK CRYSTAL. 19TH CENTURY.

Enthroned Virgin and Child. Boxwood, bronze and carved rock crystal. 19th century. On a padded base, there is a second base made of bronze, the metal from which the throne is made. It stands on four low columns with smooth shafts and capitals decorated with scrolls and simplified plant forms, decorative elements that are repeated at the waist, combined with oval blue beads; the backrest, square and openwork with very schematic scrolls, is topped with four carved rock crystal pearls. The Virgin Mary is seated on it, with a crown that repeats the decorative elements of the throne, dressed in a tunic and cloak and with a book in her hand. The Child Jesus, on her lap, also looks forward, while blessing with his right hand. The iconography comes, as usual, from Byzantine models: among the types of Theotokos, the Panakranta or Panacranta is the one in which Mary appears seated on a throne, with the Child on her lap and both facing the spectator, showing what was agreed at the IV Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon (451 AD). These arrived in Europe already in the Romanesque, developing the iconography of the West. The present work can be compared with the Italo-Byzantine icon of the 13th century preserved in the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC (United States), or the carving of the "Virgin of the Battles" of the Monastery of San Pedro de Arlanza, made around 1225-1235, and preserved in the Museum of Burgos, or the Romanesque one from the mid-17th century today in the Museum of Fine Arts of Buenos Aires (Argentina), although there are a large number of examples. However, details such as the decoration of the capitals, the anatomy shown by the two figures, the scrolls of the throne and the crown, the folds of the draperies, a certain air in the faces despite their schematization, the symmetry present in various points of the work, etc., show that the carving belongs to a date closer to the present. Specifically, to the style known as Neo-Gothic: this was inspired by works from the 13th to the 15th-16th centuries and was opposed to the preceding Neoclassical style; it was born in England towards the middle of the 18th century, and spread throughout continental Europe in the 19th century.

· Size: 10x10x24 cms