Beautiful Madonna of Toruń

The Beautiful Madonna from Toruń - a Gothic sculpture depicting Mary and Infant Jesus. One of the most valuable, in terms of artistic value, images of the Madonna and Child made at the turn of the 14th and 15th century. In terms of typology and stylistics, this work is pars pro toto of the Beautiful Madonna, an iconographic type shaped before 1400. The sculpted images of Beautiful Madonnas represent the Beautiful style, a stylistic trend shaped during the Gothic period in Central Europe.

Before World War II, the sculpture of the Beautiful Madonna was located in the church of St. John, the former parish church of the Old Town, now a cathedral of the Diocese of Toruń. At the end of the war it was stolen and removed by the Germans - the trace was ultimately lost. Only the original console with the bust of Moses, which was the basis for the statue, has been preserved to this day. A faithful copy made in 1956 by Witold Marciniak was put in place of the lost sculpture of Mary and the Child.