Irish Arts Review

A Loving Embrace: The Carrickfergus MadonnaAuthor(s): Eileen BlackSource: Irish Arts Review (2002-), Vol. 22, No. 4 (Winter, 2005), pp. 78-79Published by: Irish Arts ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25503295 .

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A LOVING EMBRACE: THE CARRICKFERGUS MADONNA

CURATOR'S CHOICE

A Loving Embrace:

The Carrickfersus

Madonna The unearthing of a forgotten

Old Master is the stuff of

dreams for art lovers from

all walks of life, from the

EILEEN BLACK outlines the background to an Old Master with a

timeless message from the collection of the Ulster Museum

professional employed in the art world to

the hungry-for-a-find car boot sale enthusiast. Such a storyline

forms the background of one of the most impressive Old Master

paintings in the Ulster Museum, a Madonna and Child (popu

larly known as the Carrickfergus Madonna), attributed to the

School of Bruges and dating to the early 16th century (Fig 1). Discovered in the Catholic church of Saint Nicholas in the

small County Antrim town of Carrickfergus in 1970 by Viscount Dunluce, picture restorer at the Ulster Museum and

T?te Gallery, the work, a three-panel altarpiece, was in an

extremely poor state but was clearly of considerable merit.

Viscount Dunluce thereupon brought the picture to the atten

tion of the museum, which purchased it from the church author

ities the following year. Sadly, the parish priest knew almost

nothing of the provenance of the work, save that it had been

given to the church by the Misses Kirk of Thornfield,

Carrickfergus in 1872. Apparently, Sir Peter Kirk of Thornfield, MP and High Sheriff of Carrickfergus, had acquired it whilst

travelling on the Continent between 1847 and 1855.

Restoration in 1979 revealed the full splendour of the piece: the

delicate modelling of the figures, the rich red and gold of the

Virgin's robe, the slender body of the Child swathed in

diaphanous drapery.

Originally thought to be after, or a copy of, a lost work by

Gerard David, the last major painter in the Bruges tradition, the

painting has since been attributed simply to the School of

Bruges, the masters of which produced numerous paintings of

the Virgin and Child of this type at the end of the 15th and

beginning of the 16th centuries. At least sixty are known to

exist, of varying quality. Examples particularly close to the

Carrickfergus Madonna can be found in museums in Bruges,

Liege; Sacramento and in the church of Saint Hilaire du Martray

in Loudon. The most similar in detail and spirit located thus far,

that in the Chiaramonte Bordanaro Collection in Palermo, bears

an inscription from the Song of Songs in the panel along the base

of the work: LEVA ElUS SUB CaPITE MEO ET ?EXTRA ILLIUS

Amplexabalitur ME (His left Hand is under my Head and with

his Right He embraces me). There is normally an inscription on

the base of these School of Bruges paintings. The fact that the

panel on the Carrickfergus Madonna is blank suggests that the

work may have been the prototype, shown to prospective

patrons who would then have words of their choice added to

their pictures. Though the inscription is missing, that from the

Song of Songs aptly describes the intense feeling and sentiment

captured in the picture, as the Virgin and Child lovingly

embrace, each focused on the other, each the centre of the

other's world. Whilst the pair are intertwined, however, it is the

Child who is the initiator; in embracing his mother, he is embrac

ing the whole of mankind. The message is ultimate love.

The iconography of the Virgin seems to have arisen out of the

need by the Christian Church for a mother figure, the object of

worship at the centre of many ancient religions. Christian imagery

has portrayed the Virgin in various ways and settings: without the

Child, with the Child alone, or with the Child and other figures such as saints and donors. The image of her supporting the Child

in her arms - the maternal Virgin so sensitively depicted in these

School of Bruges paintings - entered the West through Byzantine

art. Of the various means of portraying the Virgin, this particular

format has probably become the most popular within the

Christian tradition. The timeless sentiment of mother and child -

so beautifully captured in the Carrickfergus Madonna - seems to

embody the essence of Christmas tide: peace, joy and love.

EILEEN BLACK is a Curator of Fine Art in the Ulster Museum

1 School of Bruges

(early 16th century) Madonna and Child

oil on panel 106.4 x 76.5cm

(Courtesy Ulster

Museum)

WINTER 2005 IRISH ARTS REVIEW |

79

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