Named for Maia, the Greek goddess of spring and growth, May has long been associated with fertility in Western culture. The ancient Greeks and Romans celebrated the month that links spring to summer with rites and festivities. Maypoles with their ribbons, greenery, garlands, and dancers are another ancient connection between May and fecundity.
Early in their history, Christians began linking Mary, the mother of Jesus, with May, perhaps to put their stamp of faith on pagan rituals. Much later, in the 18th century, the Jesuits initiated formal recognition of this practice, and by means of their schools the concept of May as Mary’s month spread throughout Western Christendom. Today, the Catholic Church honors Mary during this month as “the Mother of God and Mother of the Church.”
Throughout this long development of Marian devotion, Christian artists created countless paintings and statues of the Madonna and child. Consequently, though the Catholic Church recognizes a number of saints as patronesses of motherhood, it is the Madonna who has remained the face of motherhood in the Church and in religious art. From the first icons right up to the present time, it is this mother and her son who have captured the hearts and imaginations of their viewers.
Windows Into Heaven
As iconographer Anthony Sweere says on the University of St. Thomas website, “In the East, the icon is considered to function like a sacrament, a channel of grace. Icons are ‘windows into heaven.’ The icon shows you, through an image, life at the throne of God; however, the life you are viewing is also viewing you.”
For centuries, such icons were a primary form of Christian art. The icons featuring Mary and the child Jesus typically contain religious symbols with deep meaning for those able to interpret them. Moreover, they depict the infant as a man in miniature, or as an infant with an adult face. In the article “Baby Jesus in Art and the Long Tradition of Depicting Christ as a Man-Child,” the writer correctly notes that “many of those images are quite ugly,” but then explains that the artists were “not interested in naturalism but rather in theological expression.” It was an attempt to portray Christ as both divine and human, fully formed as such from his birth.
A version of the popular icon "Our Mother of Perpetual Help" at St. James's, Spanish Place, a cathedral in London. (Renata Sedmakova/Shutterstock)
Painted during the Renaissance, “Our Lady of Perpetual Help” is one of the more famous icons in the West because of its beauty and its symbolism. Note, for instance, that Mary stares directly out at the viewer rather than at the Christ child who has fled to her for help. Above the pair hover the Archangels Michael and Gabriel, holding the instruments—spear, sponge, cross, nails—of Christ’s crucifixion. Christ clasps his mother’s hand, a symbol of protection, and one of his sandals has loosened, indicative of his fear and his flight to her. The Greek letters identify the figures in the painting, and the colors all have specific meanings. Yellow, for example, is associated with heaven, while Mary’s mantle of blue can represent transcendence and divine mystery.
The central panel of the "Maestà," 1308–11, by Duccio di Buoninsegna. Tempera on panel. Museum of Siena Cathedral, Italy. (Public Domain)
While the Eastern Church has retained this style of icon down to our present day, Western artists from the 14th century onward depicted both Mary and Jesus in a more naturalistic way. In these paintings, for instance, Mary focuses more of her attention on her child, and Jesus looks more like an actual infant rather than a miniaturized adult.
With its assembly of saints surrounding Mary and the infant Jesus, Duccio di Buoninsegna’s late medieval “Maestà” is credited with commencing this turning away from the style of Byzantine icons toward naturalism. Two hundred years later, with the Renaissance blossoming in Italy, these more realistic paintings of the Madonna and child were both commonplace and popular. Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Virgin and Child With Saint Anne” retains the blue mantle traditionally associated with Mary, and the Christ child is fondling a lamb, an image of the Good Shepherd. But the faces of Mary and her mother, Anne, particularly those half-smiles so typical of weary and loving mothers, focus our attention on these women.
"The Virgin and Child With Saint Anne," circa 1503, by Leonardo da Vinci. Oil on poplar panel. Louvre Museum, Paris. (Public Domain)
"Madonna and Child With Angels" (known as the "Madonna With the Long Neck"), 1534 until 1540, by Parmigianino. Oil on panel. Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy. (Public Domain)
In his “Madonna With the Long Neck,” commissioned by a church in his native Parma, Francesco Mazzola, known as Parmigianino, gives us a Madonna attended on her right by angels. On her left stands the much smaller figure of St. Jerome, his size revealing his human status vis-à-vis these figures from heaven. Unlike icons, this painting of angels and the Madonna is sensuous and a bit exotic, but what is most striking is the child, with his unnaturally long body, lying in his mother’s lap. Here, Parmigianino has rendered a foreshadowing of Christ’s death by crucifixion, a Pietà featuring an infant son rather than a man.
The Modern Madonna
A copy of Roberto Ferruzzi's "Madonna of the Streets" at the Church of the Holy Trinity in Croatia. (Zvonimir Atletic/Shutterstock)
Jump forward a few hundred years, and in the 1890s Roberto Ferruzzi painted the “Madonna of the Streets,” a thoroughly modern portrait of mother and child. The traditional blue cloak remains, and the gold scarf covering her head reflects the color of heaven, but it is the look on this Madonna’s face that captures our attention. Her eyes gaze heavenward, and she appears to be listening to someone while her baby sleeps peacefully on her chest.
Interestingly, Ferruzzi didn’t intend this painting as a portrait of Mary and Jesus. He took as his model an 11-year-old girl he encountered one day in the streets of Venice, holding her baby brother close to protect him against the winter’s chill. Perhaps because he named the painting “La Madonnina,” or “Little Madonna,” his Italian audience immediately acclaimed the work as a Madonna and child. The painting became wildly popular, and today reproductions of the “Madonna of the Streets” can be found in homes and churches around the United States.
The "Modern Madonna and Child" on the cover of the Dec. 23, 1922, issue of The Saturday Evening Post. (Public Domain)
In 1922, just before Christmas, The Saturday Evening Post introduced readers to J.C. Leyendecker’s thoroughly contemporary “Modern Madonna and Child” with its art deco dress and decoration. A century later, artists like Henry Wingate and Liz Lemon Swindle continue to bring paint and brush to canvas to depict the Virgin Mary and the child Jesus.
The Good Mother
"Madonna of the Magnificat," circa 1483, by Sandro Botticelli. Tempera on panel. Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy. (Public Domain)
Here, we have barely scratched the surface of the innumerable paintings of the Madonna and child, from the most primitive of early Christian icons to the work of today’s artists. Cindy Ingram’s online post features “25 Favorite Madonna and Childs in Art History”; another site lists over a hundred of “The Greatest Famous Works of Blessed Virgin Mary Art”; and we could still go on adding image after image.
From the art and from literature and Christian teaching, we know that until the Reformation, all of Christendom venerated Mary in her role of mother in all sorts of ways, including through intercessory prayer and pilgrimages to shrines and churches dedicated to her. By the late Renaissance, her image and reputation were ubiquitous in churches, the homes of the wealthy, and some public spaces.
We also know that for 15 centuries, these images of Mary promoted certain virtues of motherhood: tenderness, protection, care, and love. To put it crassly, these works acted as ongoing public service advertisements for motherhood, though they were unintended as such. The Madonna became an archetype of the good mother, an exemplar whose portrayal on canvas has surely touched the hearts of untold millions of viewers.
After all, every one of us has a mother. These are, then, more than just artworks that we stroll past in a museum or a church. Down through the centuries, to an extent we lack the ability to measure, these paintings undoubtedly have offered inspiration, hope, and comfort to countless mothers, resonating with those blessed by good mothers and perhaps giving solace to those unhappy with Mom.
It’s May. Whatever our religious faith, we can look at these paintings or their reproductions and gain some special gifts from them this Mother’s Day.
"Madonna and Child," 1855, by Franz Ittenbach. Oil on canvas. Minneapolis Institute of Art. (Public Domain)
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Jeff Minick has four children and a growing platoon of grandchildren. For 20 years, he taught history, literature, and Latin to seminars of homeschooling students in Asheville, N.C. He is the author of two novels, “Amanda Bell” and “Dust On Their Wings,” and two works of nonfiction, “Learning As I Go” and “Movies Make The Man.” Today, he lives and writes in Front Royal, Va.
