Titles of Mary - Descriptive Titles of Mary Related To Visual Arts

Descriptive Titles of Mary Related To Visual Arts

Image Type Typical Art Style Description

Hodegetria
"She Who Shows the Way"

 Byzantine Mary holds Christ in her left hand and with her right hand she "shows the way" by pointing to Him;

Sedes Sapientiae
"Throne of Wisdom"

 Romanesque Christ is seated in His mother Mary's lap, symbolically the "Throne of Wisdom";

"Gothic Madonna"

 Gothic Based loosely on Byzantine Hodegetria iconography; typically depicts a standing, smiling Mary and playful Christ Child; considered one of the earliest depictions of Mary that is strictly Western;

Madonna Lactans
"Our Lady Nursing"

 Renaissance, and others The Virgin is depicted breastfeeding the Holy Infant. One of the earliest depictions (if not the earliest depiction) of Mary, is Our Lady nursing, as painted in the Priscilla Catacombs ca. A.D. 250;

Mater Misericordiae
"Mother of Mercy"

 Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque A regal, celestial Mary is depicted covering the faithful in her protective mantle; first arose in the late 13th century in Central Europe and Italy; depiction is commonly associated with plague monuments.

Maestà
"Majesty"
of the Virgo Deipara
"Virgin God-bearer"

 Gothic Mary is seated in majesty, holding the Christ Child; based on Byzantine Nikopoia iconography;

Pietà
"Pity"
of the Mater Dolorosa
"Mother of Sorrows"

 Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque Mary cradles the dead body of Jesus Christ after his crucifixion; this type emerged first in the 13th century in Germany as an Andachtsbild or devotional icon relating to grief; Italian Pietàs appeared in the 14th century; Michelangelo's Pietà (1498–1499) is considered a masterpiece;

Mater Amabilis
"Loving Mother"
commonly, "Madonna and Child"

 Renaissance, Baroque Iconic Western depiction with many variations; based loosely on Byzantine Glykophilousa ("sweet kisses") iconography; Mary turns her gaze away from the Christ Child as she contemplates His future Passion; Renaissance emphasis on classical ideal types, realistic human anatomy, and linear perspective are evident;

Read more about this topic:  Titles Of Mary

Famous quotes containing the words titles, mary, related, visual and/or arts:

    “We have to be despised by somebody whom we regard as above us, or we are not happy; we have to have somebody to worship and envy, or we cannot be content. In America we manifest this in all the ancient and customary ways. In public we scoff at titles and hereditary privilege, but privately we hanker after them, and when we get a chance we buy them for cash and a daughter.”
    —Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)

    “A beautiful woman is born Queen of men and women both, as Mary Stuart was born Queen of Scots, whether men or women.”
    —Herman Melville (1819–1891)

    “So universal and widely related is any transcendent moral greatness, and so nearly identical with greatness everywhere and in every age,—as a pyramid contracts the nearer you approach its apex,—that, when I look over my commonplace-book of poetry, I find that the best of it is oftenest applicable, in part or wholly, to the case of Captain Brown.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    “The chess pieces are the block alphabet which shapes thoughts; and these thoughts, although making a visual design on the chess-board, express their beauty abstractly, like a poem.... I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists.”
    —Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968)

    “No one is ahead of his time, it is only that the particular variety of creating his time is the one that his contemporaries who are also creating their own time refuse to accept.... For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts. In the history of the refused in the arts and literature the rapidity of the change is always startling.”
    —Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)