The figural group with the seated Madonna holding a pear in her right hand and the Child balanced on her knees gives the impression of a high relief rather than a three-dimensional sculpture. With her left hand, she holds the Child, who is grabbing at her cloak with his left hand and reaching for the pear with his right. The whole is framed as a slightly convex equilateral triangle, the apex of which is Mary’s beautifully rendered head, with her long wavy hair falling diagonally onto her shoulders, continuing into the expanding and illogical arrangement of the drapery towards the ground; the folds are shaped very broadly and the ridges are strongly accentuated.
There are no parallels to this sculpture in the Slovenian patrimonium. Mary’s static, grounded appearance and the modelling of the drapery, as well as the lively nude Child, are reminiscent of similar depictions in the engravings of the South German Master E. S. (The Blessed Virgin of Einsiedeln, 1466, L. 81) from only a few decades earlier and the sculptures of Nikolaus Gerhaert van Leyden (e.g. The Virgin and Child with St Anne, before 1473, stone, height 64 cm, Deutsches Museum, Berlin), who died in 1473 in the relatively close Wiener Neustadt.
Provenance: Ljubljana, suburb of Šempeter (perhaps the
parish Church of St Peter)