Sternberg Madonna

He considers the statues of St John from Třeboň and the Madonna of Venice (Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf) to be the initial types on which the Toruń circle based its work.

The torso is covered by sumptuous drapery, extended in width and divided up by a wealth of generous bowl-shaped, hairpin-shaped, and tube-shaped folds.

The Sternberg Madonna resembles the Krumlov type in particular in the way the hair is curled and in the motif of the mother pressing the fingers of her right hand into the soft body of her child.

Also absent is the circular movement of the folds, which with both related Madonnas are wrapped around the apple as the central point of the psychological relationships, where the hands of mother and child meet.

[11] The veil of the Virgin Mary is not stylised into tubular shapes, but spreads out loosely, and the Infant Jesus holds one tip of it in his hand.

In the opinion of Fajt and Suckale, the whole composition of the sculpture refers to Jesus’ future passion and death, and attention is drawn towards the child by Mary’s movement and gesture and the conception of the drapery.

[7] This conception of the compassionate Madonna, who knows in advance what suffering awaits her child, is based on the mystic vision of St Bridget of Sweden.

Johann was master of works at the masons’ lodge of St Vitus Cathedral in 1398-1406, following in the footsteps of his father and his older brother Wenzel.

The sculptural decoration of these works from the time at which the two artists were active has a different character, and the identification of the "Junkers of Prague" as the sculptors of the Sternberg Madonna thus remains merely a hypothesis.

[11] Kutal carried out an extensive comparative study and came to the conclusion that the sculptor who made the Sternberg Madonna came from the Parler masons' lodge and was familiar with older Bohemian woodcuts and paintings.

In the view of Ivo Hlobil, later alterations to the statue, in particular the trimming down of the rear of the originally fully three-dimensional sculpture and the lack of polychrome on the reverse side, may indicate an intermediary location (before it came to Babice) in the chapel in Sternberg Castle.

The restorer believes that the oldest layers of polychrome are on the flesh colour, the wimple, and the gilded areas (the hair, the crown, and the hems of the mantle), that only a chalk-glue ground was applied to the other surfaces, and that painting work was interrupted when the reverse side of the statue was trimmed down.

[15] Minor damage to the hem of the mantle was in the past repaired by re-carving, and the arrangement of the drapery is therefore in places lacking in logic.

The reverse side of the statue, originally intended to be in an open space, was fully three-dimensional, with a fan-shaped arrangement of the folds in the mantle from the shoulders down to the plinth, but not long after completion it was trimmed down,[16] probably in connection with being re-positioned on a corbel.