Master Sculpture & Works of Art
Master Sculpture & Works of Art
Property of The Bass, Miami Beach to benefit the John and Johanna Bass Art Acquisition Fund
The Virgin and Child on a Crescent Moon
Auction Closed
February 7, 08:37 PM GMT
Estimate
18,000 - 22,000 USD
Lot Details
Description
Property of The Bass, Miami Beach to benefit the John and Johanna Bass Art Acquisition Fund
Follower of Thomas Schwanthaler (Ried 1634 - 1707)
Upper Austrian, early 18th century
The Virgin and Child on a Crescent Moon
polychrome wood
height: 80 in.; 2.03 m
With Antiquitaeten Reinhold Hofstaetter, Vienna, until 2 September 1967;
John and Johanna Bass Collection, New York, 1967-1979;
Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach.
Miami, Bass Museum of Art, Human Rites, 25 June - 2 October, 2010;
Miami, Bass Museum of Art, Taplin 2012, 3 March - 14 October, 2012.
The present, life-size sculpture of the crowned Virgin standing on the crescent moon and holding the Christ Child is carved with Thomas Schwanthaler's late Baroque bravado. Both figures are shown here with the typical elongated, almost rectangular shaped faces with hooded eyes that are slightly downturned, and dimpled chins.
Thomas was from a large Austrian and Bavarian family of sculptors whose work spanned a period of almost 50 years. He was a virtuoso craftsman who created figures composed of masses of heavy drapery with deep folds and sweeping movement. An example of his work is the figure of Saint Scholastica on the richly decorated double altar in the parish church of St. Wolfgang am Abersee, Salzkammergut, 1675-6. See Decker1 for a very similar group of the Virgin and Child seated on a crescent moon, with comparable facial types and drapery called "after Thomas Schwanthaler, circa 1700" in Pichelsdorf, which in turn echoes a large seated Madonna and Child circa 1706 on the high altar in Lochern, by another Upper Austrian sculptor, Meinrad Guggenbilcher.
1H. Decker, Barock Plastik in den Alpenländern, Vienna, 1943, pl. 167