She has survived state-sponsored destruction, revolution in Europe and the ravages of time to return now to our shores after a 600-year absence. On Sunday an early alabaster religious statue of the Virgin and Child will take its place among the rarer medieval glories of the British Museum; unveiled to the public as a testament to the forgotten artistry of 14th-century English sculptors.

“It is a great Christmas present to the museum and to its visitors,” said Lloyd de Beer, co-curator of the medieval collection at the museum. “This statue is a marvellous and amazing thing, as there are so few that we have left intact from that time. It speaks to the collection at the British Museum and also to the latest stories of religious and cultural destruction that are going on elsewhere.”

The statue, which stands 75cm high, is thought to have been made around 1350 in the Midlands by an unknown and highly skilled hand. It is regarded as the best surviving example of its kind on show in Britain.

“This is evidence of the deep artistic heritage of that part of England,” said De Beer. “We know alabaster was being quarried near Derby and Stafford as early as 1330. It was particularly popular in the 14th century because of its translucent whiteness and the way it takes paint and gilding, rather like ivory.”

Somehow the statue escaped the wholesale wrecking of religious artefacts in churches and cathedrals during the Protestant Reformation of the mid-1500s to travel across the Channel. De Beer and his colleagues speculated that it might have been bought by a wealthy foreigner long before the threat of destruction to religious icons that came with the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII. Alternatively it could have been smuggled out later, as the danger to religious works became clear.

Much of its early life was spent in seclusion at a monastery in St-Truiden, Belgium. There it avoided the violence of the French Revolution, when many religious icons were also destroyed.

Hartwig Fischer, director of the British Museum, says the statue is ‘a poignant acquisition as we approach the festive season’. Photograph: Alamy

“When you look at an object like this and think what it has endured, it is so moving,” said De Beer. “If the British Museum exists for nothing else, it exists for this. I hope that people will come to see this to discover its story, as they do with other significant medieval exhibits like the Lewis chessmen, or the Royal Gold Cup, but then also realise what great artists we had working here.”

Remarkably the piece still retains some of its original decorative colour and gilding. The Virgin, who is standing, is depicted in a crown as the queen of heaven, while the Christ child holds an orb in his right hand. Both faces have been worn away by devotional kissing and touching.

“When she was bought at auction by a London specialist she was covered in thick, brown varnish,” said De Beer. “During conservation the varnish was stripped away and she came out singing.”

Research has shown that the statue was exhibited in Brussels in 1864 and then snapped up by a renowned Austrian banker and private collector, Dr Albert Figdor. On his death it entered the private collection of a European family before being spotted at auction. The statue, described by the director of the British Museum, Hartwig Fischer, as “beautiful and moving” and “a poignant acquisition for the British Museum to make as we approach the festive season”, was obtained from specialist dealers Sam Fogg with the help of the Art Fund and the National Heritage Memorial Fund.

Early religious royal injunctions issued by Henry VIII had merely called for objects of religious “idolatry” to be taken down, citing the words of the second commandment: “Thou shalt make thee no graven image, neither any similitude of things that are in heaven above, neither that are in the earth beneath, nor that are in the waters under the earth.”

English alabaster sculpture has had a bad rap until now. Here, though, we can see the skill of a real work of art. Lloyd de Beer, British Museum

But a more severe injunction followed after the succession of his son, Edward VI, in 1547. It called for the clergy “to take away, utterly extinct and destroy all shrines, coverings of shrines, all tables, candlesticks, trindles or rolls of wax, pictures, paintings, and all other monuments of feigned miracles, pilgrimages, idolatry, and superstition: so that there remain no memory of the same in walls, glass-windows or elsewhere within their churches or houses. And they shall exhort their parishioners to do the like within their several houses.”

In the following months religious statues were smashed, while a few were hidden behind walls and under floorboards. Some had their eyes deliberately damaged or their heads lopped off. “We have placed the new statue in a gallery next to the South Cerney head and foot, broken from another statue, so that visitors can see what happened to most of these works,” said De Beer.

“It also stands near a French Virgin and Child in ivory, so we can show it is just as sophisticated a piece. English alabaster sculpture has had a bad rap until now, because there was an element of mass production to some of the later work. Here, though, we can see the skill of a real work of art.”