German school; end of the 15th century.

German school; late fifteenth century.
"The Virgin and St. Joseph".
Carved wood.
Presents, slight flaws, wear and damage caused by xylophagous treated.
Measurements: 53 x 23 x 15 cm.
Saint Joseph and the Virgin are melted in an embrace with their hands intertwined. Their posture, added to the gesture of each of them with their heads down, their eyelids lowered and their lips straight without smiling, show the spectator a sorrowful attitude, which evidently awakens the empathy of everyone who observes this work. The way in which the carving has been designed indicates that it was conceived to be seen from the front, since the rear area is less worked. However, this detail does not prevent the front from being defined by the quality of the detail that can be seen in the way in which the curls of Saint Joseph have been carved, as well as in the folds of the Virgin's mantle of angular character, very typical of the German school.
With the arrival of the Gothic period, a substantial aesthetic change took place throughout Europe, both in architecture and in painting and sculpture. The symbolic and timeless hieratism of the Romanesque gave way to a desire for reality and narrative sense that had its roots in classical sculpture and forced artists to take nature as a model. Gothic sculptors therefore sought to represent the visible world as it is. In this way they try to humanize the gestures and attitudes of the characters, which acquire individuality. Aesthetic conventions were left behind -such as the large eyes that stood out above the rest of the face, symbolizing the soul of the character- and a naturalistic representation of faces, anatomy, clothing, etc. was sought. Following this new aesthetic line, the figures abandoned their vertical, symmetrical and hieratic postures to adopt others that were increasingly more expressive and gestural, with greater realism in movement. At the same time, they sought to represent the emotions of the characters through eloquent gestures of the face and hands. The Gothic undergoes an evolution, from the classicism of the 13th century, where the serene beauty of idealized naturalism is sought, to a certain mannerism of the forms that can be seen in the stylization and elongation of the figures, already in the 14th century. Due to its dating, in the 15th century, we can frame this carving within the mature Gothic period. Having already surpassed the proto-Gothic, at this time the changes in the aesthetic mentality become more evident. Gestures and symbolic and conventional representations were left behind and the artists, still anonymous, had as their main goal the naturalistic representation of characters and objects but, above all, of expressions and gestures. In Germany, Gothic appeared around 1220 and its sculpture was subordinated to the facades. In Gothic sculptures, naturalism prevailed, evident in this work, perhaps because of its Carolingian heritage, brought to German lands by its links with the Byzantine Empire. German artists formulated a realism not always faithful to the anatomical reality, although tremendously dramatic in their bodies, with elaborate folds of clothing.