Birth of the Virgin Mary and Childhood

Attribution
by Jehan Soulas
1519–1521
 

Overview

The first sculptural sequence of the choir screen at Chartres, beginning at the western end of the south ambulatory, was executed by Jehan Soulas1 between 1519 and 1521. Carved in the hard, fine-grained limestone quarried at Tonnerre, these deeply undercut reliefs form the opening narrative of the Marian cycle and draw primarily on the Protoevangelium of James (Gospel of James), an apocryphal text that elaborates the early life of the Virgin.

Soulas’s work here marks a decisive moment in the evolution of French Renaissance sculpture: Gothic architectural frameworks remain, but the figures themselves are increasingly naturalistic, psychologically engaged, and animated by complex gesture. Domestic detail, narrative asides, and carefully observed social types lend the scenes a striking immediacy, while the limestone’s crispness allows for exceptionally refined treatment of drapery, hair, and facial expression.

The Annunciation to Joachim

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The cycle opens with Joachim in the mountains, following the rejection of his offering at the Temple of Jerusalem on account of his childlessness.2 Shamed and withdrawn from society, Joachim is shown among shepherds and sheep in a rocky, pastoral setting. His pose, leaning on a staff, head inclined, communicates resignation and spiritual trial.

The Archangel Gabriel appears to Joachim to announce that his wife Anne will conceive a child. Soulas stages the encounter with careful spatial separation: the angel’s intervention interrupts Joachim’s isolation, visually bridging the human and divine realms. The shepherd seated nearby, rendered with disarming informality, reinforces the earthly setting and heightens the miraculous nature of the annunciation.

The Annunciation to St Anne

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In a parallel scene, St Anne is shown at home, grieving Joachim’s absence and her own barrenness. Gabriel appears to her as well, delivering the same divine promise.3 Anne’s posture, turned inward, hands drawn toward her body, suggests private sorrow rather than public shame.

Behind Anne stands her servant, Judith,4 holding a jug.5 This seemingly incidental figure anchors the scene in everyday domestic life and reflects Soulas’s interest in genre detail. Such secondary figures are not merely decorative: they provide scale, rhythm, and a sense of lived reality, aligning the sacred narrative with contemporary experience.

The Meeting at the Golden Gate

sculpture chartres renaissance saint anne joachim

Having each received the angelic message, Anne and Joachim meet at the Golden Gate of Jerusalem,6 shown here as a fortified Renaissance city with towers and battlements. This architectural backdrop transforms the apocryphal episode into a recognisably contemporary urban setting.

Anne is accompanied by her servant, who stands slightly apart, observing the reunion. Joachim and Anne embrace and kiss, an intimate gesture that, within medieval theology, prefigures the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary ⓘ.7 Soulas renders the moment with remarkable tenderness: the figures incline toward one another, their drapery folds interlocking to form a single sculptural mass, visually reinforcing their restored unity.

The Birth of the Virgin

sculpture chartres renaissance birth virgin

The narrative continues with the Birth of the Virgin Mary. In the foreground, the newborn Mary is being washed by a midwife and Anne’s servant, their movements choreographed around a low basin. The handling of the infant is careful and reverent, underscoring Mary’s exceptional status even at birth.

In the background, St Anne reclines on her bed, attended by another woman who leans forward to look upon her.8 This spatial layering, foreground action contrasted with a quieter, more intimate background moment, demonstrates Soulas’s sophisticated narrative structuring and his sensitivity to female experience and domestic ritual.

The Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple

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The sequence concludes with the Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple. In the background, the young Mary ascends the fifteen steps leading to the Temple altar, a traditional motif symbolising spiritual ascent and later associated with the Gradual Psalms.

In the foreground, Anne and Joachim converse, their gestures restrained but expressive, as they witness their daughter’s dedication. To the left, a small boy carrying a wicker basket tugs at his mother’s dress,9 an arresting moment of everyday distraction that punctures the solemnity of the scene. This child, like the servant figures elsewhere in the cycle, exemplifies Soulas’s humanising impulse and his ability to integrate sacred history with observed reality.

Style and Significance

Throughout this opening Marian sequence, Jehan Soulas combines late Gothic architectural framing with Renaissance figural sensibility. The figures possess weight and volume; drapery responds convincingly to underlying bodies; faces are individualized and emotionally legible. The narrative unfolds with clarity, but also with warmth and subtle humour, especially in the inclusion of children and servants whose gestures feel spontaneous and unforced.

These reliefs set the tone for the entire Chartres choir screen, establishing a mode of storytelling that is both devotional and vividly human, an approach that reflects broader currents in early 16th-century French sculpture while remaining deeply rooted in local tradition.

 

Tags

France
Eure-et-Loir
Renaissance