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hard Philp Gallery
English
Sculpture of the Virgin
c. 1320
Limestone
Height: 88 cm
In 1290, at each place where body of Eleanor of Castile rested for the night on its way to London for burial, a cross was erected to her memory; but, of the original twelve crosses only three have survived. These carvings did not copy the likeness of the queen but relate to carvings of the Virgin and other female saints, and in turn were hugely influential for the sculptures of the Virgin into the fourteenth century.
The York Chapter-House Madonna, c. 1320 is characteristic of the florid style of the crosses, and its rather narrow sloping shoulders and swaying attitude are typical features of the carving in the north in the mid-fourteenth century. The visual connections between the York sculpture and our figure of the Virgin suggest that it may come from a mid-fourteenth-century northern workshop highly influenced by the Eleanor Crosses.