Unique rediscovered 14th c. Madonna restored
A previously-unknown 14th century wood statue of the Madonna has been restored and gone on display at the Convent of St. Agnes of Bohemia in Prague. Over three years of meticulous work, restorers removed overpaint layers and returned the sculpture to its original subtle palette. Researchers found that during the 19th century, the Madonna was located in the Church of Saint Lawrence in Havra, hence its monicker: the Madonna of Havra. It is also known as the Madonna on the Angelic Throne.The statue was discovered by accident in a cottage in northwestern Bohemia in 2022. The current homeowners who found it had no idea of its history, but the house was previously owned by Sudeten Germans. They were members of the Nazi Party, so after World War II they would have been subject to the denazification decrees of President Edvard Bene, stripped of their citizenship, expelled from Czechoslovakia and all their property confiscated.The statue is just over three feet high and was carved from linden wood. It depicts the enthroned Madonna holding the baby Jesus on her lap with three small angels around her, one each side, one under her feet. She has a high forehead and wavy hair. The angels by her side are making music. One holds a fiddle, one a quiterna (a stringed instrument like a lute but with a flat back).It was carved during the 1360s or 1370s. The design and form of the piece has significant features in common with the sculptures made by the Master of the Beovsk Madonna. This workshop is believed to have operated in Prague near the imperial court of King of Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV. Its customers were aristocratic courtiers of Charles IV and of the Archbishops of Prague. The National Gallery in Prague acquired the Madonna in 2022 for CZK 4.5 million ($218,000), thanks to funds from the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic. In order to restore the statue, liberating it from later interventions and overpaint, it was given a CT scan. This helped conservators figure out what was original polychromy and what parts were added.Restorer Markta Pavlkov and her team then devoted three years to bringing the 95-centimetre-tall sculpture back to life.It must originally have been beautifully polychromed, judging from the fragments that survived. She had silver garments and accessories and a golden cloak.Before the restoration began, the statue underwent detailed examination, says Ms. Pavlkov:We examined the wood using dendrology and identified it as very high-quality linden. CT scans showed that the wood is completely sound. As for the paint, when we first received the statue it had been overpainted with poor-quality basic coloursred, green, yellow, blue. During our research, we discovered at least three to five previous paint layers beneath these.Some of the original features are missing today, including part of the Virgin Marys right hand and part of her dark wavy hair at the crown of her head. According to Ms. Pavlkov, this was likely the result of later artistic alteration.She originally had a crown carved directly from the same piece of wood as the sculpture itself. She also wore a veil, which covered part of her hair and draped down to her chest. It was probably cut away and replaced with a metal crown. And the child Jesus received a metal crown as well.
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