Maternal clay - Vierge à l’Enfant by Michel Colombe, terracotta, circa 1500

 

Recently acquired by The Louvre, this terracotta sculpture of the Virgin and Child was made around 1500 for the tympanum of the entrance door to the chapel of the Château de La Carte in Ballant-Miré (Indre-et-Loire). The château was constructed beginning in 1497 by Jacques de Beaune (circa 1455-1527). Coming from a family of cloth merchants from Tours, of which he was mayor in 1498, he had a successful financial and administrative career at the court of France, until his disgrace and execution in 1527. The attribution to Colombe was first proposed in 1901, but it was only in 2010 that the attribution was fully accepted. 

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Michel Colombe (circa 1430, Bourges - circa 1513, Tours), French sculptor whose work bridges the late Gothic and Renaissance styles, he had a long career though only very few of his works survive. He was the son of the sculptor Philippe Colombe. His brother Jean Colombe was an important miniature painter and illuminator who worked on the Très riches heures du duc de Berry. And his nephew Guillaume Regnault appears to have trained in his atelier.