‘Why should I like a Virgin?’ the viewer may wonder, while observing the sixteenth century wooden bust of the Mater Dolorosa, (Virgin of Sorrows) by Spanish sculptor Pedro de Mena, which is currently on display at the Fitzwilliam Museum’s Spanish & Flemish Gallery. The image of a crying Virgin, with ruptured, glass-like, chestnut-amber eyes and porcelain skin, raises questions of why a piece of seventeenth-century religious art would be relevant to a contemporary viewer and even why the sculpture should be acquired by the Fitzwilliam Museum.

Religious art seems to generate mixed feelings among the museum’s visitors. The genre seems to call for certain seriousness, almost for a devotional reverence in the way the piece is looked at and thought of. Some may find it distant, a type of art for Bible connoisseurs, one rooted in a bygone era and representing conservative values. This is why genuine public appreciation of religious art is dying, even though exhibitions featuring fifteenth and sixteenth-century Italian Masters are always crowded.

Yet, there is much more to religious art than religion; there is also playfulness, dramatic evocation of human feelings, stage-like settings, eroticism, myths and storytelling. Fourteenth and fifteenth-century viewers were more appreciative of this playfulness and imagination than we are. For example, the stained glass windows of King’s Chapel follow a typological scheme: Old and New Testament scenes are juxtaposed, in a game of association. In the window of the Annunciation, the archangel speaks: "Ave Maria, gratia plena" while the overhanging stained glass depicts Eve. For the contemporary audience, the implicit playful anagram juxtaposing the two was clear: backwards, ‘Eva’ reads ‘Ave’.

Another work on show at the Fitzwilliam features a similarly subtle, playful element. Annibale Carracci’s The Magdalene in the Wilderness shows the saint crying, looking upwards in an aesthetic pose – yet her breast is exposed revealing erotic undertones. The painting alludes to Magdalene’s life as recounted in the Golden Legend, where the lives of the saints are enriched by numerous comic incidents.

De Mena’s Mater Dolorosa also features a disguised element of playfulness. Tim Knox, Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum explains, "The thing about this bust is that it is not one of those lugubrious virgins with rolling eyes that one associates with Spanish religious art. Here instead is a strikingly simple, and arrestingly intense, portrait of a beautiful young woman – an Andalusian peasant girl perhaps?

When I first saw the sculpture I could not resist thinking that it had a certain ceramic-doll likeness. Dolls are hugged by children and evoke a feeling of tenderness and intimacy. De Mena’s Mater Dolorosa recalls one of those doll-like Spanish processional sculptures of Virgins, dressed in real clothes, such as the seventeenth century Virgen de la Esperanza de Macarena in Seville. De Mena’s sculpture also aims at life-likeness with gently furrowed brows, natural flesh tones, glass eyes, teardrops and eyelashes made from human hair. It is an evocative sculpture, one that re-enacts the drama of losing a son, performed by an infant-looking mother.

If one thinks ‘playfully’, De Mena’s sculpture should still elicit our attention, as modern viewers, without being remote: it moves between the mimetic, crystallising the concept of art as rival to life, and the artifice (thanks to its mannequin-like aesthetic). Reminsicent of an Andalusian girl, De Mena’s Mater Dolorosa combines dignity and playfulness, seriousness and extroverted grace. The Fitzwilliam Museum ran a campaign throughout the summer to purchase the piece (including £30,000 from the Art Fund and £10,000 from The Henry Moore Foundation) and are set to announce whether it was successful next week.

The Fitzwilliam Museum’s appeal for acquisition gives a feeling to our Freshers of how vibrant and committed the Cambridge art scene is. Critical minds cannot exist without creativity and Cambridge is a place where students can nurture this creativity both intellectually and artistically. If you have something of the painter, the poet or the musician within you, express it by joining the Cambridge Creatives, submitting to Notes Magazine, or, of course, visiting a museum.

Kettle’s Yard, the home of Helen and Jim Ede (curator at the Tate Gallery in London in the 1920s and 30s), features one of Britain’s most distinctive twentieth century collections, including Winifred Nicholson and David Jones, as well as sculptures by Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Constantin Brancusi and Henry Moore. It is a gallery, but a home too, where the colours and forms of displayed artworks are complemented by those of homely objects such as glasses and vases with flowers.

Take a break from your essay: paint, write a poem, discover hidden artworks within your college rooms or wander the halls of the Museum of Archeology and Anthropology. Cambridge is as a voyage of intellectual and creative discovery, so if you haven’t lost your Cambridge arts virginity yet, then why not let the Mater Delorosa be the one.