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July 12, 2009
The Golden Virgin of Essen
This statue of the Virgin and Child was made around 980 for Abbess Matilda, granddaughter of Emperor Otto I. I like it for two or three reasons. First, it's all golden and great. Second, she's got great enamel goggle eyes - and they're weirder in person than in photographs. Third, she undercuts a particularly tedious assertion of those kinds of people who like to see the invention of the reflective individual in the 12th or 13th Century.*
They tend to say things like "all Virgin and Child sculptures from the 11th Century are hieratic and stiff and frontal and formal and not very nice. Then in the delightful Gothic era we begin to see mothers who interact vividly with the child Jesus." I know, I'm not being fair, but one does get tired of the condescension, whether from Lady de Burgh** or other medievalists.
Well hell. Look at this one. So she's not making eye contact with Him - but the whole pose is as dynamic as a Schoene Jungfrau of the 15th Century. This artist had seen something in touch with the Classical - something Byzantine, something real, something naturalistic. The monastery at Essen undoubtedly had stuff that had percolated west from the 9th Century capital of the world - Constantinople. That marriage for Otto II with the Theophanu girl, whoever she really was, came with gear.*** In fact, one of the immediate successors of the abbess who commissioned this statue was even named after Theophanu.
What a nexus object! I was very happy to visit Her.
*You know, like this book.
**Gratuitous Jane Austen reference.
***Really. We're still debating who Theophanu was - niece of the Emperor?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at July 12, 2009 10:51 PM