While maiolica vessels and plates were made throughout Italy, this standing Virgin and Child is part of a small group of high quality large scale maiolica sculptures which were likely made in the eastern Italian communes of the Marches and Emilia-Romagna. The Virgin’s embrace of the Christ child is firm but tender, stilling the child’s youthful energy and instilling the pair with a sense of both solidity and intimacy. The existence of a nearly identical sculpture in the local museum in Pesaro suggests that this figure may have been a popular image of local devotion that was reproduced in multiple versions.

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