Statue of Mary, mother of Jesus

Our Lady of God

One of the first objects acquired by the Tolmin Museum was a small wooden statue of the Virgin Mary with Jesus. The museum bought it in 1951, shortly after its founding, in the village of Polje on the Šentviška plateau. It is not known who made the statue, or why, but the year 1714 carved on the pedestal tells us that it was made only one year after the famous Tolmin uprising.

The Šentviška plateau was one of the most important centres of the peasant uprising in Tolmin. Of the eleven leaders of the uprising, who were all sentenced to death, three came from the Šentviška plateau. The brother of the hated tax collector Jakob Bandelj, who was among the main reasons for the uprising, served as a priest on the plateau. The simple statue, the work of a local carver, may therefore have been created as a plea to God for a merciful punishment of the imprisoned Tolmin farmers, or as a thank you for the safe return of some of them.