Biblical Views: Virgin Mother in Modern Art with Traditional Christian Values - The BAS Library
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Biblical Views: Virgin Mother in Modern Art with Traditional Christian Values

By Mary Joan Winn Leith

Yes, I know what you are thinking: What on earth possessed the editor of BAR to publish such a disturbing image? Perhaps you are sputtering with outrage at the very idea that the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus, could be portrayed half-flayed, with her muscles and part of her skull exposed. But don’t turn the page in disgust too quickly. What I hope to show is that first impressions can be misleading. Sometimes, what at first strikes us as atrocious might even, when viewed in context, end up providing spiritual enrichment—or at least, a nod of understanding. So […]

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Endnotes

1.

The work also evokes famous art history icons, among them Leonardo da Vinci’s drawing of a fetus, Rodin’s Walking Man, and Degas’s Little Dancer.

2.

The “Birth Madonna” Madonna del Parto, in Monterchi, Sansepolcro, by Piero della Francesca, 1467.

3.

Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Ephesians, VII.

4.

The Nicene Creed (381 C.E.) to which all Christians adhere, regardless of denomination, includes the words “incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man, he was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered, and was buried.”

5.

Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Trallians, X.

6.

Ephrem of Syria, For the Epiphany, Hymn 2.

7.

Ephrem of Syria, For the Nativity Hymn 3.

8.

Look at Marina Warner’s now-classic, Alone of All Her Sex (Knopf, 1976; Vintage, 1983) for an entire chapter on “The Milk of Paradise.”