CIRCLE OF DANIEL MAUCH (CIRCA 1477-1540), GERMAN, ULM, CIRCA 1510-1515 | VIRGIN AND CHILD ON A CRESCENT MOON

Private collection, Dinkelsbühl, Germany, circa 1920s;

private collection, Europe

G. Otto, Die Ulmer Plastik der Spätgotik, Reutlingen, 1927, p. 306, fig. 355;

S. Guillot de Suduiraut (ed.), Sculptures allemandes de la fin du Moyen Age dans les collections publiques françaises 1400-1530, exh. cat. Musée du Louvre, Paris, 1991, p. 223, fig. b

This charming group of the Virgin and Child on a crescent moon was made within the sphere of influence of Daniel Mauch, the last great late-Gothic wood carver to emerge from the famous School of Ulm in Upper Swabia. The arrangement of the Virgin's drapery and her long, thin strands of hair are clearly indebted to Mauch's Oertel Madonna of circa 1510-25 (Reinhardt, op. cit., no. 20), while the Child is near-identical to that held by the Virgin of the Wippingen Altar, carved in Mauch's workshop or circle around 1510-1520 (ibid., no. 31). The Virgin's sweet and youthful features are closely analogous to those of the Virgin in an Anna Selbdritt group in Colmar (Guillot de Suduiraut, op. cit., no. 60), which relates to a group of the same subject attributed to Daniel Mauch (Reinhardt, op. cit., no. 9). 

RELATED LITERATURE

B. Reinhardt and E. Leistenschneider, Daniel Mauch: Bildhauer im Zeitalter der Reformation, exh. cat. Ulmer Museum, Ulm, 2009