Category: The Madonna

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 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 […]

In a Holy Family of four figures, we have frequently the Virgin, the Child, and the Infant St. John, with St. Joseph standing by. Raphael’s Madonna del Passeggio is an example. In a picture by Palma Vecchio, St. John presents a lamb, while St. Joseph kneels before the Infant Christ, who, seated on his mother’s […]

The addition of Joseph, as a fifth figure, completes the domestic group. The introduction of the aged Zacharias renders, however, yet more full and complete, the circle of human life and human affection. We have, then, infancy, youth, maturity, and age, — difference of sex and various degrees of relationship, combined into one harmonious whole […]

In a composition by Parmigiano, Christ is standing at his mother’s knee ; Elizabeth presents St. John the Baptist; the other little St. John kneels on a cushion. Behind the Virgin are St. Joachim and St. Anna ; and behind Elizabeth, Zebedee and Mary Salome, the parents of St. John the Evangelist. In the centre, […]

It is distinctly related, that Joseph brought up his foster Son as a carpenter, and that Jesus exercised the craft of his reputed father. In the Church pictures we do not often meet with this touching and familiar aspect of the life of our Saviour. But in the small decorative pictures painted for the rich […]

As if to render the circle of maternal duties, and thereby the maternal example, more complete, there are prints of Mary leading her Son to school. I have seen one in which he carries his horn-book in his hand. Such representations, though popular, were condemned by the highest church authorities as nothing less than heretical. […]