Virgin and Child

One of the most inventive artists of the late Middle Ages, Hans Leinberger created his powerful, impassioned works at a time when the veneration of religious images was increasingly criticized as idolatry. This group of the Virgin and Child is one of only two surviving attempts by the artist at bronze casting. One senses from the unfinished, at times rough quality of the work that he was experimenting with an unfamiliar medium. Indeed, he chose not to complete the work with chasing and polishing, probably realizing that the holes in the surface, which resulted from the bronze being cast too thinly, were beyond repair. Like Leinberger’s wood sculptures, this statuette is endowed with an astonishing sense of dynamism. The heavy folds of the garment resolve into an apparent weightlessness at the base, which suggests, if for a moment, that Mary is floating in midair