VIRGIN OF THE ANNOUNCEMENT ROUERGUE, END OF THE... Lot 14

VIRGIN OF THE ANNOUNCEMENT ROUERGUE, END OF THE XIVth CENTURY Poitou limestone, polychromy. H. 45 cm, W. 27 cm. References Bibliography Jacques Baudouin, La sculpture flamboyante : Rouergue, Languedoc, Nonette, éd. Créer, 2003, p. 87. This woman is represented in an attitude of surprise which designates her as a Virgin of the Annunciation. With her head slightly tilted to one side, she holds one hand to her chest while the other clutches the cover of a closed book. It seems that she was interrupted in her reading, drawn from her meditation, in accordance with the text of the Gospels and the devotional practices of the late Middle Ages . According to Saint Luke, the archangel Gabriel, God's messenger, burst into Mary's home as she was praying to announce that she would give birth to the son of God and that she would name him Jesus... This she accepted, calling herself "God's servant" (Luke 1, 26-38). The Virgin, here dressed in the fashion of the 15th century, the cloak thrown over her shoulders revealing an elegant dress corseted under the apron, presents a particularly youthful physiognomy. Her eyes stretched upwards and her fine mouth with pinched lips evoke the sculptures of the Aveyron. One thinks as well of the group of the Annunciation commissioned by a rich local merchant Georges Figouroux for the chapel of Saint-Artémon in the cathedral of Rodez, around 1470 and unfortunately repainted since (fig.1), as well as the one commissioned by the founder of the Ouradou chapel Jean Pouget de Carmarans, canon of Rodez cathedral between 1501 and 1526 (fig. 2). The Virgin of Ouradou has been compared to the one in the Fénaille Museum in Rodez, sculpted in a white limestone similar to the stone of Poitou (fig. 3). Ours, less mannered, has the natural charm of the Virgins of the end of the 15th century.