London’s Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) has saved a rare 12th-century ivory sculpture of Christ from permanently leaving the country. It was purchased by the V&A for just over £2 million after a year of fundraising, trumping an offer made by New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met).

Titled Deposition of Christ from the Cross, the walrus tusk statuette most likely belonged to a much larger altarpiece of the Passion that was destroyed in the 16th century during the Reformation. The 18cm-high carving was made in York between 1190 and 1200. The V&A already holds another smaller fragment from the same altarpiece, depicting Judas at the Last Supper, which was donated to the museum in 1949.

Sandy Heslop, a medieval expert at the University of East Anglia, described it as “the first expression of tenderness in a work of art”.

Little is known about the provenance of the piece before the 1900s. London-based collectors, John and Gertrude Hunt, acquired the revered sculpture in the 1930s. It had been on long-term loan to the V&A for 40 years when the Hunt heirs decided to sell the sculpture in 2022. A $2.5 million (£2 million) offer from the Met was provisionally accepted through a private Sotheby’s sale, until the UK government stepped in last year.

Stephen Parkinson, the former arts and heritage minister, twice deferred the export license for the Romanesque carving to allow the V&A an opportunity to match the Met’s price. In the UK, an export license is required for the permanent or temporary export of a cultural object that is of a certain age, monetary value, or considered a national treasure. The V&A finally achieved their fundraising goal with the help of a £700,000 grant from the government-backed National Heritage Memorial Fund and £350,000 from the Art Fund, as well as a successful appeal to the public.

The export reviewing committee, which advises the government on national treasures, described the sculpture as “one of the most culturally and aesthetically significant objects” that it had dealt with in the past five years.

Following some light restoration, Deposition of Christ from the Cross will return to public display in the V&A’s Medieval and Renaissance galleries as a permanent part of its collection for the nation.  “I am thrilled that the V&A has been able to save this elemental object of English art for the nation,” V&A director Tristram Hunt said in a press statement. “In this small, sublime carving is captured a lost story of Christian culture, Romanesque design and medieval craftsmanship. I am hugely grateful to everyone who so generously contributed to secure this wondrous piece for the national collection.”