Vierge Ouvrante
Circa 1300
Rhine Valley
Oak, linen covering, polychromy, gilding, gesso
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 17.190.185, Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan
The title literally means "Opening Virgin." The conceit governing this piece is that Mary is appropriately named the "Mother of God," at one time a controversial doctrine. Thus when we look inside "her" we find not simply a Christ Child but an entire secondary statue of the "Throne of Mercy," a genre in which the Father presents his son to the viewer on a cross. In this case the cross has no corpus, but it is clear that there once was one, because of the peg-hole in the riser and the cruciform halo where the two parts cross.
The painted panels inside the wings picture the events attendant to Mary's becoming the "Mother of God." On the top left is
the Annunciation,
on the top right
the Visitation.
The next two panels on the left picture the Nativity and the Adoration of the Magi, while on the right we see the Presentation in the Temple and the Annunciation to the Shepherds.
The individual images keep to an older style and iconography. The Nativity panel, for example, is laid out with Mary recumbent in the lower register separate from the Christ Child and beasts above. The Magi panel follows the tradition of having the three men represent youth, middle age, and senescence, with the middle mage pointing up to the star that led them. The
shepherds in their panel are also distributed among the three ages. The youngest, on the right, plays a bagpipe while the others point to the angel. (The image of the angel has been scratched.)
Also available: the closed state of the statue.
Read more about images of the Madonna and Child.
Read more about images of the Throne of Mercy.
Read more about images of the Nativity.
Read more about images of the Magi.
Read more about images of the Visitation.
Read more about images of the Annunciation.
Read more about images of the Presentation in the Temple.
Photographed at the museum by Richard Stracke, shared under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.