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The Golden Madonna of Essen is a gilded sculpture of the Virgin Mary and part of the treasury of the cathedral of Essen, a city in northwestern Germany.
It is both the oldest known sculpture of the Madonna and the oldest free-standing sculpture north of the Alps, and one of the few major works of art to survive from Ottonian times. To this day it remains an object of veneration and symbol of identity for the population of the Ruhr Area.
The sculpture has been known by its current name Golden Madonna only since the times of 19th century romanticism. A liturgical manuscript dating from around 1370 simply describes it as dat gulden bild onser vrouwen (literally "the golden image of Our Lady"), the 1626 treasure inventory of the Essen convent lists Noch ein gross Marienbelt, sitzend uff einen sthuell mit lauteren golt uberzogen ("Yet another image of Mary, sitting on a chair and coated with pure gold").
Date of Origin
The sculpture is dated around the year 980. Thus, the Madonna was created during the tenure of Mathilda II. (971-1011) as abbess of the Essen convent. Under the reign of Mathilde, a granddaughter of Emperor Otto I, and her sucessors Sophia of Gandersheim (1012-1039) and Theophanu (1039-1058), the convent acquired what are today the most precious works of art of the Essen treasury. The creator of the sculpture is unknown, but it is generally presumed that it was crafted either in Cologne or Hildesheim. Hildesheim is home to a Madonna slightly younger than the one in Essen, while Cologne seems more likely as the home of the artist since the folds in the Madonna's gown resemble those of the Otto-Matilda-cross dated 982 which is also part of the Essen treasury but was doubtless created by a Cologne goldsmith as it shares many features with the Gero cross of Cologne Cathedral.
Description
Mary is depicted sitting on a stool, with a slightly oversized Christ child figure sitting on lap. She wears a tight, long-sleeved tunic and a cloak (palla) drawn over her shoulders. On her head she wears a veil, the ends of which are covered by the cloak. In her right hand she holds aloft a globe with her thumb and two fingers, while her left hand supports the infant in her lap. The Christ figure himself wears a pontifical gown and presses a book against his breast with his left hand.
The statue measures 74 cm in height, the pedestal is 27 cm in width. The core of the sculpture was carved from a single piece of wood, most likely from a poplar tree, though earlier art historians have assumed it to be pear, plum or lime. The sculpture's surface is entirely covered with gold leafs less 0.25 mm thick, which are held in place by minute golden bolts. The size of the individual gold leafs varies to suit the surface texture. The faces of both mother and child are pounded out of one single leaf each. The coloured eyes of the figures are made of cloisonnéd enamel. While the eyes of the mother are inset into carved fittings, those of the child are merely pasted on the wooden core. The child's hand is made of cast silver and was added only in the 14th century; the original right hand is lost. There are traces of original tenth century adornments on the orb in the Virgin's right hand, on the right back leg of the stool, as well as on the child's book and nimbus. The agrafe showing an eagle and seemingly pinning Mary's cloak is an early thirteenth century addition; the fibula beneath has gothic features and is dated to the fourteenth century.
Preservation efforts
The Madonna was first restored in 1905. By then the statue was riddled with woodworm tunnels and threatened to collapse. The restorers carefully removed the gold leafs, wrapped the statue in plaster cast, insufflated the cavities to remove bore dust, impregnated them with insecticides and finally filled them with a mixture of glue, chalk and water, turning the figure around repeatedly in the process so as to reach every nook and angle. The surface holes were then sealed with bolts of oakwood and the gold leafs reapplied. The restoration cost a total of 3.200 Goldmark part of which was paid by the Prussian state.
During and after World War II the statue suffered from hasty evacuation transports; many gold leafs came loose and the wood was again infested with parasites. A second restoration was undertaken by the Essen goldsmith Classen, who gassed the sculpture with pesticides and filled the woodbores with "liquid wood", a plastic then commonly used in wood restaurations.
The most recent restoration was undertaken in 2004 on the spot. A workshop was installed in the cathedral's treasure chamber to examine the condition of the sculpture. X-rays and endoscopy were used to detect remaining cavities, and both wood from the core and the sooty film that had accreted on the gold leafs over the centuries were chemically analyzed. The experts recommended that the statue be kept in a steady climate and not exposed to agitation. Cologne wood restorers Ria Röthinger and Michaela von Welck consolidated the wood of the stool, silversmith Peter Bolg polished the metal leafs of the coating and the child's right silver arm which had tarnished black over the years. The restoration was overseen by a commission of art historians and restorers led by Dr. Brigitta Falk, curator of the Essen treasury. The Madonna was returned to its habitual place in the cathedral in December 2004. A detailed restoration report is due to appear in an anthology 2007 along with further research papers on the statue and the Essen convent.
History
Medieval mentions
Whether and exactly when the statue was commissioned, acquired or donated is unknown, and documents referring to the Madonna are surprisingly scarce for the first cpuple of centuries of its existence. It seems certain that it was part of the cathedral treasure by 993, when Emperor Otto III paid the convent a visit and donated a crown, the so-called "child's crown", which is also part of the treasure to this day. Since this first mention the Madonna has always been in the cathedral save in wartime. Apparently the bitter conflict between the diocese of Cologn and the Lords of Isenberg over domination of the Essen convent that resulted in the murder of Archbishop Engelbert by the hands of Friedrich von Isenberg in 1225 did not touch upon the possession of the sculpture, nor did the centuries-long quarrel whether the city of Essen be legally a free imperial city or rather a tributary to the convent ever affect that matter.
The seal of the city of Essen of 1244 shows the Madonna between the Saints Cosmas and Damian. The first documented mention of the Madonna is from the 1370 Liber Ordinarius, which details a fully developped liturgy and processions centred around the statue. The fact that the Canon received the Madonna from the hands of the treasureress for processions on Purification leads historians to assume that the sculpture was used shown exclusively for processions and was stored out of public sight for the rest of the year. Suggested repositories include the fortresslike westwork of the cathedral and the armarium dictum sychter, an annex to the right nave.
Evacuations in Early Modern Times
The Thirty Years' War necessitated the first evacuation of the sculpture. In 1634 the then abbess of the Essen convent, Maria Clara von Spaur, Pflaum und Valör, sought shelter in Cologne and took the cathedral treasure with her. It would remain there until the end of the war in 1648. In these years the Madonna and the now lost Marsus shrine of the Essen treasure were paraded in processions, outshining the treasures of Cologne's cathedral, as the annals of the Essen convent proudly claim.
The second evacuation was effected in 1794 before the advance of the French revolutionary army. It was hidden in the orphanage of the nearby town Steele. The convent of Essen ceased to exist in 1803 following the secularization of of ecclesiastical principalities in the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss. The Ownership of the Madonna passed on to the Roman Catholic parish St. Johannes, which used Essen cathedral as its parish church. Throughout the 19. century the sculpture was for the most time locked away in the treasury, only seldom examined by art historians.