And the next in my theme of what I consider to be interesting medieval carvings, carefully placed between beer posts to add some variety for my two loyal blog readers. The gallery states that this is Master of Hronský Beňadik, but I don’t quite understand that as this is a place name of a Slovakian village, so I’ve relied on AI to explain and the answer is apparently that it comes from the abbey there but they don’t know who created it. Either way, the abbey was seized by the Ottomans in the 1520s who kept the building but knocked some of the Gothic bits down and fortified it.
That might explain why this wooden statue isn’t still there, apparently made from lindenwood (I had to Google that, but it’s lime wood) as it’s from around 1470. A fair amount of the paint has survived, it’s in remarkably good shape for its age. I’ve never quite understood why statues from this period give the Madonna such long fingers, especially as that must have been harder to carve than short stubby ones. The young Jesus is already showing a blessing hand signal, which seems very astute for someone so young. I do wonder where this has been kept over the years, I couldn’t find anything of its provenance, but I still like that for a period this was an important devotional artwork that would have been important to at least a couple of generations (and likely more).