Virgin Offering Grapes (Primary Title)
Virgin Offering a Bunch of Grapes to the Christ Child (Former Title)
Daniel Mauch of Ulm, German, active 1510 - 1538 (Artist)
Seated on a bench with her divine son on her lap, the Virgin Mary offers the infant a bundle of grapes. In the book of John, Christ refers to himself as the "true vine" and states that humankind, as the branches, cannot produce fruit apart from the vine. The grapes might also symbolize the future Passion of Christ, since the wine of the Eucharist is believed to transform literally into the physical blood of Christ. By uniting the loving relationship of mother and child with the allusion to Christ's death, this sculpture could have evoked an emotional response from the medieval viewer.
General Endowment Fund
Image released via Creative Commons CC-BY-NC
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