Church of Our Lady

The parish of this church was dedicated to the Virgin Mary several centuries before her marble figure with the child appeared at the altar. Mary holds a closed book, and Jesus Christ between her knees has already straightened up, as if ready to take a step; the donors’ coat of arms survives nearby, and their family’s grave slabs lie in the floor by the altar. Worship still takes place beneath these vaults, but part of the building also operates as a paid museum: the church community owns the statue, while the municipal museum service is responsible for displaying it.

In fifteen oh six, the brothers Jan Mouscron and Alexander Mouscron had a heavy marble statue sent from Florence to Bruges. They made their living by trading English cloth; their firm maintained offices in Florence and Rome, so the brothers could deal with Michelangelo without intermediaries from ecclesiastical circles. It remains unclear whether they commissioned this work in advance or bought it from his workshop. The documents reliably establish something else: the Mouscrons paid the sculptor and then brought his work to their native city.

Michelangelo depicted the Virgin Mary with Jesus Christ. She sits on a stone, holding a closed book and the child’s hand; Jesus Christ stands between her knees, as if about to take a step. The Flemish name of the church, Onze-Lieve-Vrouw, means “Our Lady”: this is what Christians call the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ. The parish had been dedicated to her several centuries before the statue appeared. The Mouscrons brought here an image of the very woman whose name the church already bore.

In fifteen fourteen, Jan Mouscron and his wife gave the statue to the parish together with an altar and a tabernacle. The deed of gift recorded a condition: the work could not be taken away from here and had to remain in the church forever. Some members of the Mouscron family were buried at the foot of the altar. Their money came from the sale of cloth, and the family’s most expensive purchase ended up above the family graves. During Michelangelo’s lifetime, no other sculpture of his left Italy.

On the night of September sixth to seventh, nineteen forty-four, retreating German soldiers wrapped the Madonna of Bruges in a mattress and took it from the church together with eleven paintings. Adolf Hitler, the head of Nazi Germany, collected works for a museum he planned in Linz. The Bruges statue was hidden in the Altaussee salt mine in Austria, where the Germans had stored nearly eight thousand stolen and evacuated objects.

After the war ended, the mine was inspected by the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives programme. George Stout, an American conservator and naval officer, was responsible for removing the finds. Before the war, he had developed methods for transporting museum objects safely; now he had to apply this knowledge underground. The marble group weighed about seven hundred fifty kilograms. Stout set up a block and tackle, lifted the statue onto a miner’s trolley, and his staff packed it for the journey to Munich.

From Munich, the Madonna of Bruges was handed over to Belgian representatives. After a temporary exhibition in Brussels in November nineteen forty-five, it was installed in the church again. The parish still owns the statue, while the museum service of Bruges is responsible for displaying it: worship takes place in the same building where a paid museum section operates. The Mouscron coat of arms remains on the altar console, members of the family lie at its foot, and above them stands the Madonna for which Jan Mouscron once demanded this very place.