Our Lady of Lincoln (2014)

Mary was regarded in the Middle Ages as the protector of the City of Lincoln, as well as the Cathedral. She is honoured today by Christians of many different traditions.

In medieval times Lincoln Cathedral was the second largest centre of pilgrimage in all England, after Walsingham. Its focus seems to have been a statue of the Virgin and Child, until this was destroyed either by Henry VIII or by Oliver Cromwell’s reformers in the 1640s. Recently it was decided that a replacement sculpture should be commissioned and after four years of preparatory meetings and four months of carving, the sculpture is now completed, and was dedicated by the Bishop of Lincoln on 31^st May 2014.

The sculpture depicts the seated Virgin with Christ child surrounded by a vesica or aureole, depicted in art as circle of light surrounding the head or body of a holy or divine person. Carved mostly by hand in limestone donated by Great Ponton Quarry in Lincolnshire, the sculpture is finished with the addition of colour in a traditional process called polychrome whereby natural earth and stone pigments are combined with an egg tempera which is then painted onto the surface of sculpture.