Our Lady of Westminster

Our Lady of Westminster is a late medieval statue of the Madonna and child, now placed at the entrance of the Lady Chapel in Westminster Cathedral, London, under the thirteenth Station of the Cross. The image is an English alabaster, flat backed, 36 inches (91 cm) high, and depicts the Virgin Mary enthroned with the Christ child on her right knee. Mary is crowned and holds a sceptre (now broken) in her left hand, the Christ child looks up at her and holds a globe with one hand, whilst with the other he blesses it. The statue is one of the greatest treasures of the cathedral, and the oldest item housed in the 19th-century foundation. Most experts in the field agree that the image was carved in the Nottingham area in about 1450 from alabaster mined at nearby Chellaston, but the intervening 500 years until 1954, when the statue was found and bought in Paris by the dealer S. W. Wolsey, are a blank. The name Our Lady of Westminster might also refer to other traditions and devotions relating to the much older Westminster Abbey nearby.

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