Spanish Romanesque-Gothic school, probably Basque, Navarrese or La Rioja, ca. 1300

Romanesque-Gothic school of the Basque Country, La Rioja or Navarre, ca. 1300.
"Virgin in Majesty (Sedes Sapientiae)".
Sculpture in carved, polychrome and gilded wood.
Her right hand is missing.
Measurements: 56 x 25 x 17 cm.
In this very sweet Marian representation, the Virgin is presented to us as a young woman with very delicate and beautiful features, crowned and with a necklace adorning her neck. She has lost her right hand, with which she may have been holding a fruit. The Child, slightly displaced from the centre, holds the orb in his left hand.
Mary is shown in a frontal position, generally resting her left hand on the Child's arm or shoulder, although on some occasions she holds him by the lower part; in her right hand, which she raises towards the sky, she holds an attribute that is either a flower of a peculiar shape or an apple. Jesus, seated on the Virgin's left knee, breaks the frontality of the group, as he is presented slightly turned to the right; with his right hand he blesses and in his left hand he holds a book or, less frequently, a sphere; his feet - or at least one of them - are resting on his mother's lap or on his mother's right leg, and sometimes his legs are crossed.
Widely used in Marian imagery since the 12th century, this type of representation underwent a series of changes in the second half of the 13th century that derived from monumental stone sculpture, especially from the innovations of the master of the Sarmental doorway of Burgos Cathedral.