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Ожившая Мадонна в европейской литературной легенде второй половины XIX в.
The sculpture image in a work of fiction is nowadays popular with researchers, who study it from the perspective of intersemiotics, intermediality and mythopoetics. The abundance of material does give opportunity both for theorization and practical analysis of certain texts, authors' styles and aesthetic trends. An animated statue is one of the most frequent episodes in 19th century literature, with Its attention to sculpture. Although the image was primarily associated with the Antiquity, it was also found in Christian tradition. One of its variants is that of Madonna coming alive. It is often found in the genre of literary legend, which deals with traditional plots and imitates old narratives. Thus, Maria's statue comes alive in legends written by G. A. Becquer (1861), G. Keller (1872) and A. France (1892). Nevertheless, the structural function and meaning of the episode vary. The episode serves as a key plot element in all the legends, but the interpretation of the image is based on different, if not opposite mythologemes. This paper aims at comparing and contrasting the image of animated Madonna statue in the texts written by different authors of the same cultural epoch.