Virgin and Child

This ivory statuette with its gangly Christ Child and rather plain-faced Virgin seems far removed from the aristocratic figures produced in Paris, which was a great center for the production of Gothic ivories. The angular and somewhat earthy figures and the intensity of the connection between mother and child find parallels in other more monumental sculpture made in the Meuse valley, where present-day Belgium, Holland and Germany meet. This border region had a long and distinguished artistic tradition.