The Virgin and Child

This ivory statuette representing the Virgin and Child was made in the South Netherlands in the 19th century. The Virgin and Child - and the hexagonal base - are copied from the celebrated Notre-Dame de Foy, a cult image made popular by the large numbers of pilgrims to the church in which it is kept, near Dinant in Belgium. The Notre-Dame de Foy itself is a late cast of a mass-produced Virgin and Child, the moulds for which were made in Utrecht in about 1430-50.

Three dimensional images of the Virgin and Child were ubiquitous from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries, produced in a wide range of materials and sizes and testifying the overwhelming devotion to th Virgin. Together with the Crucifixion, statues and statuettes of the Virgin and Child were the pricipal objects of devotion in the Christian Church, and vast numbers were made for ecclesisastical, monastic and private worship.