Mary with Child

The Madonna of Bienice captivates with her subtle, youthful image. With a crown on her head, Mary sitting on a throne is depicted as the Queen of Heaven. The heated, solemn and severe expression of the throning Madonnas, typical of the Romanesque period, gives way to the image of the caring Mother developed in the Gothic period. The inclination of her head and the caring gesture with which she embraces her Son is an image of the Saviour's Mother full of humility and modesty, a model of motherhood. The sadness on her contemplative face and the gesture of offering an apple in the centre of the composition testify that she is aware of the future redemptive death of her Son. The courageous, upright posture of the youthful Jesus and the gesture of accepting the fruit from his Mother show her readiness and consent to the work of Salvation. The apple, the Old Testament fruit of sin, symbolises the redemption of original sin through Jesus' martyrdom on the cross. In this context, Mary becomes the new Eve, participating as the Mother of God in Salvation history. The sculpture is an extremely popular representation in medieval art of the throned Mary with the Child standing or sitting on her knee. Figures of this type furnished church interiors and functioned as cult figures. The sculpture represents the Gothic style of the early Gothic period, originating from the Cologne court style from around 1330.

Kinga Krasnodębska