Michelangelo, Bruges Madonna

0:00:06.3 Dr. Steven Zucker: When we think of the work of Michelangelo, we often think of Florence or Rome, but we’re looking at an important early sculpture by Michelangelo of the Madonna and Child in Bruges, now known as the Bruges Madonna.

0:00:21.3 Dr. Beth Harris: Here we are up in northern Europe, and the two real economic powerhouses of Europe were down in Italy with the Italian city states, but also the towns in Flanders, and at one point, Bruges was one of the most, if not the most economically prosperous cities in all of Europe, and there were Italian merchants and businessmen and bankers who were living here in Bruges.

0:00:48.0 Dr. Zucker: And so although we often learn about the Italian Renaissance as distinct from the Northern Renaissance, there was lots of interaction. In fact, a family of cloth merchants purchased this and had it shipped to Bruges.

0:01:00.9 Dr. Harris: We might also be reminded of the Portinari Altarpiece, which made the reverse journey from Bruges to Florence and had an enormous impact there.

0:01:11.2 Dr. Zucker: This is a magnificent sculpture. It was made early in Michelangelo’s career around the time that he produced his famous Pietà. And it has a finish to the marble that is similar to the highly finished quality that we see in that sculpture in the Vatican.

0:01:26.2 Dr. Harris: Like that sculpture, this was commissioned for a funerary chapel in an important church. We are looking at a subject that there are thousands of examples of both in Italy and here in northern Europe, the Madonna and Child: the Madonna seated, holding the Christ child.

0:01:44.1 Dr. Zucker: Barely holding the Christ child. The child almost seems to be slipping off her lap.

0:01:50.0 Dr. Harris: And he’s landed on this curve of drapery that now supports him. In a way, he’s between his mother and the future, and he’s a little bit unstable and she holds his hand as if to steady him.

0:02:03.2 Dr. Zucker: Perhaps about to take his very first step, and there’s not only a sense of veracity in the way that an infant might move away from his mother, just tentatively, but there’s also important symbolic meanings here.

0:02:16.7 Dr. Harris: When we look at an image of the Madonna and Child, we are asked to think about Christ’s future, Mary’s future, ultimately the crucifixion.

0:02:26.0 Dr. Zucker: And we can see the seriousness of Mary’s face as she seems to have a sense of foreknowledge of that fate.

0:02:32.6 Dr. Harris: And that movement away from his mother can be interpreted as a way of Christ moving forward into that future. What we have here is a composition that is more or less in the shape of a pyramid where the Virgin’s body encompasses the form of Christ’s.

0:02:51.4 Dr. Zucker: Think back to the Medieval Romanesque sculptures, so many wooden sculptures that represent a kind of perfect frontality with the Christ child seated on the Virgin Mary’s lap, her knees are together, she is like a throne, what is referred to as the seat of wisdom. But there’s no symmetry in those medieval sculptures. It has been completely discarded here. Mary is only slightly askew. She still retains a kind of centrality and a sense of solidity with the exception of her knees. But Christ is full of torsion and twisting and turning. Michelangelo is in a sense, showing off. He’s saying, look what I can do with the human body, look at the kind of movement that I can instill within the stone. Although the sculpture is in its original location and both figures are looking down in a way that is appropriate for a funerary chapel, this is where the family was buried, the architectural surround is not original.

0:03:49.4 Dr. Harris: And yet it’s such a privilege to see a work by Michelangelo here in its original location.

This work at the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekerk

Arts and heritage from VISITFLANDERS

Flemish Masters

Lindsay R.E. Sheedy, “Marble Made Flesh: Michelangelo’s Bruges Madonna in the Service of Devotion” (M.A. thesis, Washington University in St. Louis, 2016).

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Carving marble with traditional tools