According to Christian belief, a maiden named Mary gave birth to the son of God, Jesus Christ. The Bible doesn’t actually give a great deal more information about Mary's life.
But those aren’t the Virgin Mary’s only stories. The Getty exhibition Visualizing the Virgin Mary follows the myriad stories about the Virgin Mary told by her devotees in the millennia since Biblical times.
Saint Luke Painting an Image of the Virgin (detail), about 1440–50, Workshop of the Bedford Master. Tempera colors, gold leaf, gold paint, and ink, 9 1/4 × 6 7/16 in. Getty Museum, Ms. Ludwig IX 6 (83.ML.102), fol. 209
The Portrait That Started It All
The very first visualization of the Virgin Mary, many in the Middle Ages believed, was painted by Saint Luke.
Since that pivotal moment, devotion to the Virgin Mary has been inextricably bound with depictions of her in art.
Virgin and Child, Master of Cardinal Bourbon, about 1500.
Tempera colors, ink and gold, 5 1/4 × 3 7/16 in. Getty Museum, Ms. 109 (2011.40), fol. 114
A central character in the Bible, the Virgin Mary became popular in the Middle Ages, in part because of her motherly role in Christian salvation.
For many medieval Christians, “Jesus was a little scary, a judgmental god,” says Getty manuscripts curator Beth Morrison. “The Virgin Mary is synonymous with compassion. So, medieval Christians thought if they said their prayers to her, she would in turn relay their pleas to God, her loving son who could refuse her nothing.”
That intimate relationship with Mary led artists to visualizations that created different meanings for Christian viewers across time, all over the world. Stories of the Virgin Mary often appeared in books of hours (personalized prayer books).
The above depiction shows the Virgin Mary giving communion (a rite usually reserved for men) to a woman imprisoned for refusing to marry and pledging her life to God. Together, the two holy women served as models of strength and resolve for the manuscript’s owner: a wealthy woman of the French court.
Virgin of Guadalupe, 1779, Sebastián Salcedo. Oil paint on a copper panel, 25½ × 19⅝ in. Denver Art Museum, 1976.56
The Virgin Mary’s story became Mexico’s story when an Indigenous man named Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin witnessed a miraculous vision of her in 1531.
This image of Mary, called the Virgin of Guadalupe, became one of the country’s most popular religious and cultural symbols.
The Virgin Mary is still central to contemporary art in thought-provoking ways. On Dec 10, three artists will come to the Getty Center for the talk Modernizing Mary to discuss her role in their work.
Controversial visual artist Alma López’s depictions of the Virgin Mary explore issues of censorship, identity, and representation. Tattoo artist Mark Mahoney will discuss his work in the black and gray style of tattooing developed in Los Angeles to create nuanced portraits of the Virgin Mary and other religious iconography. Afro-Cuban American artist Harmonia Rosales explores black identity through traditional Renaissance art forms like depictions of the Virgin Mary.
“The Virgin Mary continues to serve as an interesting multivalent symbol with different dimensions,” says Morrison.
“For some people, she’s a very traditional symbol of motherhood and child-rearing. For others, she personifies the concepts of compassion or justice. In the context of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico, she even acted as a rallying cry for independence.”
