THE BEAUTIFUL MADONNAS

The heir of medieval court art, a new couception of Manan statuary (i.e. dedicared to rhe Virgin Mary) was born around 5400 in the crcatson of images of a bcanty at once idealized and real; poisessing ethereal grace, yet wholly human. These innumerable sculptures bear wituess to the fervour with which the Virgin was worshipped and echo the hymns which, hke rhe Totapolchra, celebrated at length Mary’s physical beauty: the perceptible sigu of her beauty of spirit.
The Schooe Madouoets, the Beautiful Madounas of Germany and Bohemia, termed pulchrum opus (beautiful work) from the  begiuniug of the fifteenth century, have a grave gentleness and a sweet charm that makes them particularly moviug. One of the most perfect examples, the Virgin aud Child from Cesky Krumlov in Bohemia, displays an extreme delicacy in the treatmeut of the small, fine face, long, bowed neck, and hands with tapering fingers that sink into the flesh of the naked Infant. This natutabstic detail, which tellingly conveys the humanity of the Son of God, contrasts with the unreality of the sinuous and slender silhouette of the Virgin With its salience of the hip, broadened by an ample cloak whose superabundant and voluminous folds fall in two cascades of lateral scrolls
repeated curves flowing down to the ground. Thus freed from strict frontality, the sculpture becomes part of the space around it, promoting a new plasticity following the hne of research into form during the second half of the fourteenth century.
The type of the Beautiful Madonna, which presented many variants and spread irresistibly throughout the Germanic eountriei, was devised in eastern Europe, probably in Prague, where it had its roots in the art of the Parlers and in Bohemian painting of the late fourteenth century. The term weicher Stil (literally, soft or gentle style) well eon— veys the sweetness of the expression and the velvety aspect of the drapery, the chief characteristics of this “fine style” or “softened style” which forms the Bohemian and Germanic version of international Gothic.
Concurrently there appeared in France, but in varying interpretations, the same concern for grace and elegance; a similar taste for the melodious play of unctuous folds and the amplification of volumes, also derived from the previous stylistic evolution. The precious gesture of Mary delicately holding back a corner of her mantle and the fineness of her childlike features are especially typical of French works like the Virgin Enthroned and Christehild Writing in the Cleveland Museum. Some come from Paris or its region, like the Virgin and Child from the abbey of Saint-Victor in Paris (Muse de Cluny) or the one from the church of Le Mesnil-Aubry (Val d’Oise); but others, of unknown origin, are difficult to localize because of the relative unity of style that prevailed around 1400. The Virgin and Child in Amsterdam, formerly attributed to the Ile-de-France or Burgundy, more probably originated in the Netherlands, as indicated by the somewhat heavy
facial features. It is also distinguished by the mundane look of its willowy silhouette oudined by the long fluid folds of the robe, gathered by a wide belt worn very high following a model then fashionable and frequently represented in contemporary illuminations. The refinements of court hfe, its gestures and sartorial fashions, permeated religious just as much as secular art as the fifteenth century began.