654 - Kurt Viehauser, Madonna Immaculata with Christ Child, carved wood, polychrome, 2nd half 20th century

Kurt Viehauser, Madonna Immaculata with Christ Child, carved wood, polychrome, 2nd half 20th century Wood, carved and polychrome painted, 2nd half of the 20th century, in the base stamp "Holzschnitzereien Kurt Viehauser" Haslach and handwritten "KV", Mary as the standing Mother of God, carrying the Christ Child on her arm and turning towards him with a gentle inclination, softly and fluidly rendered garment, over the red dress a gold-coloured mantle lined in dark blue, which wraps around the shoulders and falls in animated folds, Mary stands on a hemisphere with a serpent above a heptagonal base, the depiction takes up traditional forms of Christian figure carving, condition commensurate with age, polychromy with larger flaking, 41x15x10 cm (HxWxD). 360-degree photo available on our website. The Immaculata depicts Mary as conceived without original sin; Pope Pius IX raised this doctrine, the Immaculata Conceptio, to dogma in 1854 in the bull "Ineffabilis Deus", her feast is on 8 December. The serpent beneath her feet goes back to the Protoevangelium in the Book of Genesis (Gen 3:15), whose old Latin version "She shall crush thy head" shaped the pictorial tradition of the Immaculata. The serpent stands for original sin and evil, over which Mary triumphs. An Immaculata in a Lower Austrian museum stands on the globe, treads on the serpent with her right foot and stands on the crescent moon with her left.