Virgin of Boixadors

This Virgin from Boixadors, in the 'comarca' of Anoia, is one of the most outstanding pieces in the Museum's Gothic sculpture collection and at the same time a magnificent example of Marian iconography in the Gothic period: while the Romanesque Virgins are usually seated, enthroned figures, characterised by their majestic air, the Gothic Virgins are figures that stress the humanity of the Mother and Son, yet without renouncing the theological symbolism. Thus, Mary expresses with her gestures the tenderness of a mother and Jesus seems to be playing, reaching out to Mary's head. But this apparently innocent gesture is at the same time a symbolic evocation of the coronation of Mary. The well-known 'Madonna della Cintola' in Prato Cathedral, in Italy, by the sculptor Giovanni Pisano offers this same characteristic. Stylistically speaking, the Virgin of Boixadors has a great deal of affinity with the Virgin of Sallent de Sanaüja, conserved in the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, and also with another Marian image in Navarre, in the church of San Andrés in Sorauren.