Category: The Madonna

  • The Entombment And Early Pictures

    THE ENTOMBMENT. In the early pictures there is little distinction between this subject and the death of the Virgin. If the figure of Christ stand over the recumbent form, holding in his arms the emancipated soul, then it is the Transito — the death or sleep; but when a sarcophagus is in the centre of […]

  • The Assumption of the Madonnas

    THE ASSUMPTION. The old painters distinguished between the Assumption of the soul and the Assumption of the body of the Virgin. In the first instance, at the moment the soul is separated from her body, Christ receives it into his keeping, standing in person either beside her death-bed or above it. But in the Assumption […]

  • The Coronation of the Virgin Mary

    THE CORONATION of the Virgin follows the Assumption. In some instances this final consummation of her glorious destiny supersedes, or rather includes, her ascension into heaven. As I have already observed, it is necessary to distinguish this scenic Coronation from the mystical INCORONATA, properly so called, which is the triumph of the allegorical church, and […]

  • The Virgin of Mercy

    Our Lady of Succor. Ital. La Madonna di Misericordia. Fr. Notre Dame de Miséricorde. Ger. Maria Mutter des Erbarmens. Sp. Nuestra Senora de Gracia. When once the Virgin had been exalted and glorified in the celestial paradise, the next and the most natural result was, that she should be regarded as being in heaven the […]

  • The Mater Dolorosa

    Ital. La Madre di Dolore. L’Addolorata. Fr. Notre Dame de Pitié. La Vierge de Douleur. Spa. Nuestra Senora de Dolores. Ger. Die schmerzhafte Mutter. One of the most important of the devotional subjects proper to the Madonna is the “Mourning Mother,” the Mater Dolorosa, in which her character is that the mother of the crucified […]

  • Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception

    Ital. La Madonna Purissima. Lat. Regina sine labe originali concepta. Spa. Nuestra señora sin peccado concepida. La Concepcion. Fr. La Conception de la Vierge Marie. Ger. Das Geheimniss der unbefleckten Empfangniss Mari. (Dec. 8.) The last and the latest subject in which the Virgin appears alone without the Child is that entitled the “Immaculate Conception […]

  • The Apparition of Christ

    THE enthusiastic and increasing veneration for the Madonna, the large place she filled in the religious teaching of the ecclesiastics and the religious sentiments of the people, are nowhere more apparent, nor more strikingly exhibited, than in the manner in which she was associated with the scenes which followed the Passion — the manner in […]

  • The Ascension

    THE ASCENSION, though one of the “Glorious Mysteries,” was also accounted as the seventh and last of the sorrows of the Virgin, for she was then left alone on earth. All the old legends represent her as present on this occasion, and saying as she followed with uplifted eyes the soaring figure of Christ, “My […]

  • L’Incoronata

    The Coronation of the Virgin. Lat. Coronatio Beatae Marin Virginis. Ital. Maria coronata dal divin suo Figlio. Fr. Le Couronnement de la Sainte Vierge. Ger. Die Kronung Mari. The usual type of the Church triumphant is the CORONATION OF THE VIRGIN properly so called, Christ in the act of crowning his Mother; one of the […]

  • The Descent of the Holy Ghost

    THE DESCENT OF THE HOLY GHOST is a strictly scriptural subject. I have heard it said that the introduction of Mary was not authorized by the scripture narrative. I must observe, however, that, without any wringing of the text for an especial purpose, the passage might be so interpreted. In the first chapter of the […]