Enthroned Virgin and Child by http://www.wikidata.org/.well-known/genid/b56821934a99b035dd58bf6c3539ed18

In 1931, a thirteenth-century wooden Madonna and Child sat in a Berlin courtroom as physical evidence. The “Enthroned Virgin and Child” (Lower Saxony, ca. 1220) had been shot five times in its gallery by a museum guard the year before. Today it belongs to the Cleveland Museum of Art, where the repairs are still visible if you know where to look.

The bullet damage is concentrated on the Christ Child. One round struck the face, leaving a gouge on the left side. Two more hit the upper body. The Virgin’s right hand, which cradles the Child, also took a hit. The sculpture was pieced back together and the losses filled, but the scars remain in the wood.

The guard, a man named Walter Menzel, opened fire with a pistol in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum. He damaged several works before being subdued. At trial the sculpture itself was brought in so the court could see the wounds. Menzel was convicted; the museum restored what it could.

The real miracle is that a piece of carved limewood survived seven centuries of war, reformations, and iconoclasm, only to take bullets in a modern gallery. When you see the Child’s face up close, you are looking at a wound from 1930, not 1220.