Ashbaugh Madonna

Date

1917

Creator

The life of Ivan Meštrović, a journey from impoverished peasant beginnings to international fame and recognition, reads like a fairytale. Throughout his career, his sculpture presented his changing attitude toward two of the most difficult issues for human beings to resolve--nationalism and religion. Because Meštrović chose to spend the last years of his life at Notre Dame as sculptor in residence, the University's campus has become a repository for works of art that tell his remarkable story [...] Meštrović may have carved The Ashbaugh Madonna while living as an exile in London during World War I. For this rendering of a beloved figure type, he used a single block of wood, as the medieval masters had done. The Madonna presents her child frontally to the people, and the baby raises his hands in the ancient position of prayer. Meštrović combined a medieval subject and sculptural style with the decorative details of his contemporaries, the Vienna Secessionists, rounding off all sharp angles into curvilinear patterns that focus on a serene and otherworldly sense of grandeur. from Snite Museum of Art, Selected Works: Snite Museum of Art (Notre Dame, 2005)