Ivory Virgin and Child (1940.27)
Although the biblical story depicts the Virgin Mary giving birth to her son Jesus in an animal stable in the Levant, she appears here with her infant as an elegant lady of the French court, carved from smooth and polished ivory. Both raw materials and finished goods crossed the Mediterranean in the 1300s, and ivory harvested from the tusks of African elephants became a coveted medium for Parisian sculpture. At the same time, private worship was becoming increasingly popular among the upper levels of society. Familiar religious imagery, such as the Virgin and Child, appeared not only in enormous stained glass and life-size sculptures, but also in tiny carvings like this one. Small-scale ivory sculptures of the Virgin and Child became so popular that they were produced in large numbers by French workshops. This shift towards the miniature marked the final flowering of the Gothic style in medieval France.