This large carved ivory statuette depicts Our Lady and Child – her long hair revealing both ears and holding the Child Jesus who holds the orb with his left hand and makes a blessing with his left – is more than forty centimetres in height.The carving is of an unusually ne quality, rendering with superb craftsmanship the contemplative face of theVir- gin, the folds of her clothes and her bejewelled clasps. Mainly carved from a single tusk, it features additions of the same material on both sides.The carved surface presents a highly polished nish, highlighting the warm quality and subtle tones of the material.This large sculpture must have been produced by Filipino or Chinese master carvers in the Philippines – to where many of them emigrated from south China in the fourteenth and fteenth centuries – for a Spanish or Portuguese clientele.1 The presence of Chinese craftsmen and Chinese mestizos in the Philippines during the colonial period resulted in the production of religious and devotional images with marked Chinese characteristics, here most apparent in the rendering of the faces. One other important and revealing trait is the presence of the suksok on the back; the typical Filipino textile tucking, fastening the Virgin’s mantle on the back to her belt underneath.2 The term suksok, literally “tuck-in”, derives from the Tagalog magsuksok (active verb) and isuksok (passive verb) which means “to insert in between layers”. While ivory devotional statuettes depicting Our Lady of the Conception and Child – known as La Purísima Concepción, a cult which became so important in the islands that the ca- thedral of Manila, the rst in the Philippines in 1578 was erected under the invocation of the Immaculate Conception – are not uncommon for this production and date, gures without the crescent moon and clouds at her feet like the present example are rare.3
1 See Marjorie Trusted, “Propaganda and Luxury: Small-scale Baroque Sculptures in Viceregal America and the Philippines”, in Donna Pierce, Ronald Osaka (eds.), Asia and Spanish America.Trans-Paci c Artistic and Cultural Exchange, 1500-1850, Denver, Denver Art Museum, 2009, pp. 151-163; Margarita Estella Marcos, Mar les de las provincias ultramarinas orientales de España y Portugal, Ciudad de México, Espejo de Obsidiana, 2010; and Gauvin Alexander Bailey,“Translation and metamorphosis in the Catholic Ivories of China, Japan and the Philippines, 1561-1800”, in Nuno Vassallo e Silva (ed.), Ivories in the Portuguese Empire, Lisboa, Scribe, 2013, pp. 233-290.
2 See José Regalado Trota, Images of Faith. Religious Ivory Carvings from the Philippines (cat.), Pasadena, Paci c Asia Museum, 1990, p. 33.
3 See José Regalado Trota, Images [...], pp. 33-35.