Classical Catholic Angel Art Man Holding a Book Looking Depressed
Books, arts and civilization
Prospero
The Virgin Mary in fine art
Holy Mary, drenched in symbolism
What paintings of Mary say about attitudes to religion and women
THE final canto of Dante's "Paradiso" opens with euphoric praise not for the Son or the Male parent or even the Spirit, simply the Female parent:
Virgin mother, daughter of your son
Humbler and higher than whatsoever other beast…
Y'all are she who so ennobled man nature
That nature's very maker did not disdain
To himself be fabricated past you.
The lines are an apt expression of the manifold contradictions embodied in the Christian mythology of Mary. "Picturing Mary: Woman, Mother, Idea", a new exhibition at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC, sets out to explore these contradictions and their evolution in Christian religious imagery. The prove brings together more than 60 works of Renaissance and Baroque Italian art, many on view in America for the first time.
Western fine art abounds with paintings and sculptures of the Virgin; indeed, until the 18th century, she was the single most frequently depicted female person figure. But it is unusual to see then many together, organised not around a style or a period merely the simple idea of Mary herself. She is an idea that changes markedly over the centuries. Her myriad titles give some indication of this: Virgin of Virgins, Holy Female parent of God, Queen of all Saints, Queen of Mercy, Queen of Peace. A listing on a wall of the showroom goes on. But even as Mary's representations shift to emphasise different facets of her function in Christian history, her essential qualities remain the same: faithfulness, devotion, humility, purity.
Pre-Renaissance Mary is represented equally queenly: ennobled, enthroned, surrounded by angels and engulfed in celestial light. In the late Heart Ages she becomes more approachable, appearing more often in the garb of an unassuming peasant. The humanist formulation of Mary gained further traction in the Renaissance: she is less empress of heaven, more mother—sewing, nursing and playing with the infant Jesus. It is a representation that is crucial to the doctrine of Jesus's "accurate humanity": Mary is his link to man nature and earthly experience. Engaged in these quintessentially female activities, she likewise provides the classic of Christian womanhood.
But even in the well-nigh unadorned depictions of Madonna and child, the halo is omnipresent. She is no ordinary woman, merely that impossible ideal compared with which all other women must ever autumn short: the perfect female parent and the perfect virgin.
During the Counter-Reformation, Mary is returned to her seat of power. Catholic artists, responding to the Protestant minimisation of her part in humanity's conservancy, re-emphasised her position as mother of God. She also takes on a growing function of her ain in the lives of the true-blue, as the supreme intercessor between her son and those who worship him. What is remarkable, across all these depictions, is that Mary near never gazes at the viewer. Her eyes are invariably downcast, suggesting solemnity, a soul turned inward, and the tragic foreknowledge of her son'south fate. The exhibition describes this wait every bit expressive of her humility, though another give-and-take for it would be submissive; information technology evokes the historic period-sometime notion that a woman's direct gaze is impure.
And though the exhibit takes pains to correspond Mary as "a protagonist in her own rich life story", the images underscore the sense in which her story is marked, to a higher place all, past lack of agency. Information technology's difficult to see her story equally her ain then much every bit the i that was written for her.
At turns, it is a story that is over-written. Every artist painting a scene from Mary's life layers it with another, either from her ain life or from biblical history. A painting of the Annunciation, the scene of Mary'due south great moment of obedience ("Behold the handmaid of the Lord"), incorporates allusions to Eve'south disobedience in Eden. Another includes Moses'due south burning bush: it burned but was not consumed by flames, evoking the same divine paradox by which Mary conceived a child yet remained a virgin. Then in that location'southward the garland of roses on the Mother'due south head, destined to get her son's crown of thorns. And, of course, images of the baby in Mary'due south arms foreshadow the Pietà , Mary cradling Christ's body afterward the crucifixion.
This is a life drenched in symbolism. The exhibit gestures vaguely to the notion that artists built on an ancient tradition by which female figures personified abstract ideals. But it would take been helpful to include some representations of the earlier female icons and deities from which the Christian Mother arose. After all, she did non step from the spiritual sea fully formed. There are the fertility goddesses from the ancient cults in Egypt and Babylonia and the earth mother of Asia Minor, worshipped under varying names and guises. And before the cult of Mary, there was the cult of another virgin—Artemis. It gradually transformed, with the growth of Christianity, into the veneration of the Virgin that Christians recognise today.
"Picturing Mary: Woman, Mother, Idea" is at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC, until Apr 12th 2015
The painting shows "Madonna of the Goldfinch", circa 1767-1770, by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo
Source: https://www.economist.com/prospero/2014/12/11/holy-mary-drenched-in-symbolism
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