Sedes Sapientiae

Entry

This oak statue shows the Virgin sitting on a bench with the infant Christ on her left knee. This type of sculpture is known as the Sedes Sapientiae, the Throne of Wisdom. The Virgin originally wore a crown to underline her status as the Queen of Heaven. According to the standard iconography, she could have been holding a pomegranate, a sceptre or a bunch of grapes in her missing right hand. Christ’s missing right hand was undoubtedly raised in a gesture of blessing. The bird (a goldfinch?) in his left hand symbolizes the soul of man redeemed by Christ’s suffering. The polychromy on the statue and the gilding on the hair have largely been lost.

The ancient pictorial tradition in which the Christ child sits on the lap of his majestically ‘enthroned’ mother is rooted in Byzantine culture.² The Sedes Sapientiae first appeared in Western miniature art in the ninth century. In the second half of the tenth century the first free-standing, three-dimensional versions of this theme were produced in the Auvergne region of France.³ From there the type swiftly spread throughout Western Europe and the Throne of Wisdom became an immensely popular subject for free-standing sculpture until around 1200. The figures, often lavishly gilded, were worshipped as cult objects in a church setting and stood on or beside an altar dedicated to the Virgin. The sculptures were frequently carried in liturgical processions and relics were often kept in them. In the Meuse area, where this example originates, the Sedes Sapientiae remained popular until well into the thirteenth century.

The Throne of Wisdom’s power may lie in the portrayal of the Virgin’s dual role – both her humanity and her divinity are made visible. On the one hand she is the ‘throne’ of Christ’s Divine Wisdom made flesh, on the other she appears as a mortal mother with her child on her lap.⁴ In early Romanesque statues the emphasis is placed on the first notion, but as style moved towards the Gothic there was a shift in preference for a more spontaneous, natural rendition with an interaction between mother and child. At some point this aspect dominated to such an extent that there was no longer any reference to the Sedes Sapientiae.

Nothing is known about the early provenance of the statue. Stylistically the type is related to a substantial group of late-romanesque or early-gothic Sedes Sapientiae sculptures from the Meuse area, that are distinctive in the depiction of the Virgin and the infant Christ with oval faces and gentle, even features.⁵ The famous Sedes in the Collégiale Saint-Jean l’Évangéliste in Liège is regarded as the principal work in this group.⁶ The statue displays the intricate, classicized draperies that prevailed until around 1240. In the two decades that followed they gave way to a simpler style with broader, broken folds like those seen in a Sedes in the Art and History Museum in Brussels,⁷ which are even more evident in one in the Museum Schnütgen in Cologne that was made around 1250.⁸ In the last of these Sedes, moreover, the elongated lines have been reduced to more natural proportions. In another version in the same museum, dating from around 1260, the draperies have become less rigid and more graceful again, influenced by French Gothic.⁹ Stylistically, the Amsterdam figure can be situated between the last two statues. The Virgin and the infant Christ have relatively gentle expressions and natural proportions, but are still shown very frontally, wearing garments with the angular folds of around 1250. Taking all this together, the statue appears to be a very early transitional piece between the romanesque and gothic periods.

Bieke van der Mark, 2024