Virgin Nursing the Christ Child (c. 1370): Art, History and Details

Virgin Nursing the Christ Child (c. 1370) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This sculpture of the Virgin Mary nursing the Christ child subtly emphasizes the intimate relationship between mother and child and brings the Son of God in his human existence closer to the viewer. The emotional interaction is characteristic of sculpture since the mid-1300s, especially in the circles close to the court of the French kings in Paris and Emperor Charles IV (reigned 1346–78) in Prague. These novel stylistic tendencies were possibly a reaction to the fear and uncertainty incurred by the first great plague wave in 1348.

Object facts

• Title: Virgin Nursing the Christ Child
• Date: c. 1370
• Culture: France, Île de France
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: painted limestone
• Dimensions: Overall: 111 x 38.5 cm (43 11/16 x 15 3/16 in.)
• Collection: MED - Gothic
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1984.157

A detail from the museum

The back of this sculpture is unfinished since it would have originally been placed against a wall or pier.

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Turner, Evan H. "The Year in Review for 1984." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 72, no. 2 (1985).
• Gillerman, Dorothy W., Joan A. Holladay, and Susan L. Ward. Gothic Sculpture in America. 1989.
• Lutz, Gerhard. “Art in the Time of the Black Death.” Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 61, no. 1 (Winter 2021): 8.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.