BOHEMIAN, CIRCA 1500 | VIRGIN AND CHILD

Private collection, Belgium

M. Serck-Dewaide, 'La Datation de la Polychromie d'une Vierge à l'Enfant de Bohême révélée par l'examen', in Bulletin de l'Institut royal du Patrimoine artistique, vol. XIV, 1973/1974, pp. 121-127

This beautiful Late Gothic Virgin and Child provides a rare testament to the 18th-century restoration of medieval works of art, as it is inscribed to the reverse by the artist from Aussig, now Czech Republic, who refreshed its polychromy in 1794. As such, the Madonna was the subject of a scholarly and scientific study (op. cit.), which concluded that rather than having been overpainted, the original polychromy was removed prior to the 18th-century restoration; several later layers of polychromy were removed during the study, restoring the Virgin to its 18th-century appearance.