'She came out singing' - Holy Virgin and Christ child return to England after 600 years

'It's a great Christmas present to the museum and to its visitors.'

On Sunday, the Holy Virgin and Christ child were reunited with their homeland.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - The alabaster statue is one of precious few medieval religious relics to survive the Reformation.

Lloyd de Beer, co-curator of the British museum, told The Guardian: "It is a great Christmas present to the museum and to its visitors. This statue is a marvelous and amazing thing, as there are so few that we have left intact from that time.

"It speaks to the collection at the British Museum and also to the latest stories of religious and cultural destruction that are going on elsewhere."

Britain is proud to accept the beautiful statue, which is regarded as the best surviving example of its kind in the country.

Interestingly, alabaster has long been considered cheap. Statues made from the material were often seen as cheap replicas of true works of art but the 75-cm-high statue defies the stereotype.

"We have placed the new statue in a gallery next to the South Cerney head and foot, broken from another statue, so that visitors can see what happened to most of these works," de Beer explained.

"It also stands near a French Virgin and Child in ivory, so we can show it is just as sophisticated a piece," de Beer explained.

"English alabaster sculpture has had a bad rap until now, because there was an element of mass production to some of the later work. Here, though, we can see the skill of a real work of art."

The Virgin and Christ's faces have been worn after years of devotional kisses and touching but de Beer believes it only makes the piece that much more valuable.

"When she was bought at auction by a London specialist she was covered in thick, brown varnish," de Beer described. "During conservation the varnish was stripped away and she came out singing."

It survived the French revolution hidden away at a monastery in St. Truiden, Belgium, while most other religious icons were destroyed.

"When you look at an object like this and think what it was endured, it is so moving," de Beer stated. "If the British Museum exists for nothing else, it exists for this. I hope that people will come to see this to discover its story, as they do with other significant medieval exhibits like the Lewis chessmen, or the Royal Gold Cup, but then also realise what great artists we had working here."

---

'Help Give every Student and Teacher FREE resources for a world-class Moral Catholic Education'

Copyright 2021 - Distributed by Catholic Online