FORT WORTH, TEXAS.- The Kimbell Art Museum announced the acquisition of one of the finest surviving silver sculptures in the Late Gothic style, a Virgin and Child created in southern Germany in 1486.

One of the most significant works of its kind to appear on the market in many years, the 21-inch-high sculpture strengthens considerably the Museum’s holdings of early northern European art.

Having recently acquired the gilt-bronze St. John the Baptist by the Italian sculptor Michelozzo di Bartolomeo (c. 1450), the Kimbell now boasts superlative examples of 15th-century sculpture illustrating both the southern (Italian Renaissance) and northern (Late Gothic) traditions. The sculpture has been acquired in celebration of the Museum’s 30th anniversary, which takes place in October 2002.

Dr. Timothy Potts, director of the Kimbell Art Museum, commented: “This extremely rare and beautiful work is a masterpiece of Late Gothic church sculpture that will take its place as one of the centerpieces of the Kimbell’s sculpture collection, alongside the Michelozzo and another recent acquisition, the classical bronze head of a Greek athlete. Having belonged to members of the Rothschild family for most of the past century and a half, it was until recently virtually unknown, and has never been publicly exhibited. The evidence for its commissioning by an important patron at a known date adds greatly to its historical importance.”

Dr. Nicholas Penny, senior curator of sculpture, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., commented: “The Virgin and Child acquired by the Kimbell Art Museum embodies an ideal of Gothic grace especially suited to realization in a precious material. It is also an astonishing survival because so much of the finest work in silver has been melted down. The Museum is to be congratulated on acquiring, in a very brief period, masterpieces of ancient Greek, Florentine Renaissance, and Northern European Gothic sculpture—works of this quality are hardly ever available on the art market today.”

Dr. Norbert Jopek, curator, department of sculpture, metalwork, ceramics and glass at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, who is a leading authority on German sculpture, commented: “The statuette of the Virgin and Child is one of the most outstanding works of art in its class. Its beauty and virtuoso craftsmanship give the figure a powerful presence.”

Dr. Ernst-Ludwig Richter, professor of art technology and conservation, Staatliche Akademie der bildenden Künste (National Academy of Fine Arts), Stuttgart, Germany, undertook an in-depth scientific analysis of the materials used in the sculpture. He commented: “Superb artistic quality, outstanding condition, and undisputed authenticity characterize the new acquisition of the Kimbell Art Museum. In the course of thirty years of scientific research on works of art, the silver Virgin and Child has been one of the most impressive objects to pass through my laboratory.”

A rare example of Late Gothic church sculpture, with particularly accomplished embossing, chasing, and gilding, the Virgin and Child was produced in the Ulm region of southern Germany. The sculpture depicts the silver figure of the standing, pensive Virgin, holding the infant Christ in her right hand and a scepter in her left. Her elaborate crown with foliate design and stars is set with 12 stones—an opal at center, along with clear and pale sapphires, garnets, and pale emeralds.

The Virgin wears a simple gown, and her hair falls loosely down her back, making the rear view of the work as beautiful as the front. The treatment of the drapery folds and the cascade of hair reveals an exquisite sense of both sculptural and pictorial design. The Virgin stands above a hexagonal plinth on a scrolling band of clouds, with one foot resting on the profile of a face in an upturned crescent moon. Standing saints and intricately cast grapevines decorate the plinth, and cast and gilded angels playing musical instruments support each of the six corners of the raised base. The figure has been executed in repoussé (shaped with patterns in relief made by hammering on the reverse side), and the Child, the Virgin’s hands, the crown, scepter, and crescent moon have been separately cast.

The Virgin’s hair, borders of her mantle, dress, crown, scepter, and the moon are all gilded. Four holes on the back of the Virgin indicate where a burst of sunrays (or mandorla) was formerly attached.

Dr. Jopek has noted that this sculpture “is one of the rare instances where the historical context is well known: the Bishop of Eichstätt, Wilhelm von Reichenau, donated this figure to his cathedral in 1486, and it was probably the sculptor Michel Erhart who was commissioned to provide the model as a basis for the statuette made by a goldsmith in Ulm.”

Erhart was the foremost sculptor working in this region in the Late Gothic period. The subject of the sculpture can be identified as the Virgin of the Apocalypse, whose imagery—the aureole of the sun, along with the 12 stars in her crown, and the crescent moon beneath her—is derived from the book of Revelations (12:1–5): “And there appeared a great wonder in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head was a crown of 12 stars . . . And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations . . . .”

The plinth bears the heraldic shield of Wilhelm von Reichenau (c. 1426–1496), who from 1464 to 1496 was Bishop of Eichstätt, a small city located above the Danube, on the Altmühl River in Bavaria. A great patron of the arts, von Reichenau supported building projects in the Eichstätt Cathedral and mortuary, and at other religious institutions.

It is likely that the Virgin and Child is the silver Virgin that von Reichenau is said to have given to the Cathedral, or one of his other donations. The inclusion of Eichstätt’s popular saints on the base of the statue supports this hypothesis: St. Richard and his children, St. Willibald (first bishop of Eichstätt), St. Winnibald, and St. Walburga, were eighth-century Anglo-Saxon missionaries to the Diocese of Eichstätt.

The Virgin and Child was likely removed and sold following the secularization of the Diocese of Eichstätt at the beginning of the 19th century. It was formerly in the collection of Meyer Karl von Rothschild in Frankfurt, where it was published and illustrated in 1885. The sculpture has subsequently remained in private hands and has never been publicly exhibited until now.

It will be featured in the exhibition Michel Erhart and Jörg Syrlin the Elder: Two Masters of the Late Gothic in Ulm at the Ulm Museum from September 8 to November 17, 2002, and will go on display at the Kimbell Art Museum in late November.