Maryʼs Gaze In The History Of Art

Pino Blasone

Mary’s Gaze in the History of Art

1 – Virgin and Child with Ss. Theodore and George, detail; St. Catherine’s Monastery, Sinai

A Byzantine Art of the Gaze Reliably, the rendering of Mary’s gaze was a kind problem for painters, since the beginnings of Christian art itself. Already in the frescos of the catacombs, we have varied pictorial typologies, as a Virgo lactans (“Suckling Virgin”, late 2nd century) in the Catacomb of Priscilla and a Virgo orans (“Praying Virgin”, 4th century) in the Coemeterium Maius, either at Rome. A later iconography is that of the Madonna with Child enthroned or in majesty, portrayed as “Queen of Heaven” and flanked by saints or angels. A Greek, and 1

Byzantine, definition for this typology would be Kyriotissa (“Mistress”). Early examples are a fresco in the Roman Catacomb of Commodilla, dating approximately to the first half of the 6th century, and a coeval icon in St. Catherine’s Monastery at Mount Sinai, in Egypt. These two artworks are less damaged and better refined than their precedents. Also because of the frontal position of the representation, the rendering of Mary’s gaze shows up as a focal element in the whole composition. Whereas in the former case the Madonna is looking out of the picture, at the painter or the spectator, in the latter she looks toward her left, as if detached from our mundane earth. Indeed it is a diversion, for there we meet with the gaze of a young St. George, seemingly deputed to intercept devotees’ prayers and to bear them to the Queen of Heaven and Son. On the one hand, especially in Mary’s mien it is still transparent some a realistic legacy of the Greco-Roman portrait painting tradition, such as re-emerged from Pompeii or from Fayyum archaeological excavations in modern times.

2 – Virgin and Child, detail; Museum of Bogdan and Varvara Khanenko, Kiev

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On the other hand, the composition resembles the picture of a Byzantine imperial court, even more than a heavenly vision. In fact, in the same type of representation, soon we will see not only nimbed but also crowned Madonnas. Another consequence is that Mary’s gaze results somewhat stern or cool, despite the liquid beauty of her wide eyes or a hieratic value of the context. If we like to detect a sweeter, more familiar expression, we had rather to watch a Virgin and Child now in the Museum of Bogdan and Varvara Khanenko, at Kiev. Dating from the 6th century, this icon too is an encaustic painting, still keeping some a Hellenistic grace. Although damaged and badly restored, in it we can perceive an intensity of the gaze of both mother and baby. Turned toward their right, we cannot know where they look at. Likely, the wood panel was cropped from a larger scene in the past. The guess that it was an Adoration of the Mages could also explain a nice gesture of Jesus’ small hand. No doubt, that of Maria Regina (“Mary the Queen”) between the Saints Praxedes and Pudentiana, in the Basilica of S.ta Prassede at Rome, is a fully Byzantine fresco. Her fair head is unveiled, haloed and crowned. She gazes directly at us or, better to say, through and beyond us, so much her glance looks vacant and hieratic. Instead of her eyes or lips, the gestures of her hands well communicate. With the right hand open, she is blessing; the other points at her own womb. The meaning is immediate to realize. This bejewelled, standing and full length portrayed Madonna is gravid. She is pregnant of the “Son of God”. Her gaze is directed as far as human eyes cannot discern, or our minds are unable to believe. Put in a so allusive manner, such a representation is almost an unique in the history of religious art.

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3 – Mary as Queen of Heaven, fresco detail; Basilica of S.ta Prassede, Rome

By time, Byzantine art will develop further and more popular types of representation. With Greek definitions, the best known typologies are the Hodegetria (“She who shows the way”), the Eleousa or Glykophilousa (“She who sweetly loves”), the Hagiosoritissa or Deomene (“She who pleads – with God – for us”). In simpler words, guide, love and intercession, are the main attributes of the Blessed Virgin, or those better involving faithful people. To each of these qualities, it corresponds an iconic representation and a peculiar sort of glance. For instance, the Hodegetria will look directly at the viewer, while holding her bimbo with one hand and indicating him with the other, for he himself is the right way. Not by chance, Hodegetria’s gaze will grow one of the most expressive and impressive at once. After Ravenna in northern Italy, for a long while the town of Matera, in the south, became a Byzantine religious and cultural centre, also thanks to the immigration and 4

contributions of Greek monks. Remarkable samples of Hodegetrias – or Hodigitrias, according to a modern pronunciation – can be found all over southern and central Italy, dating from the Middle Ages. Yet, if one wants to seek a very expressive and impressive looking Hodegetria, something suggests that he should reach Matera. Actually there, in the city cathedral, it is still venerated the so called “Madonna della Bruna”: nothing but a 12 th century fresco of a typical Hodegetria, showing her blessing Child. Nonetheless, her gaze is so keen, as to concur to justify the popular devotion. The stylized design is so accurate, as to even anticipate the transition from the “Greek manner” to a Proto-Renaissance artistic style.

4 – Madonna of the Bruna, fresco detail; S.ta Maria della Bruna Cathedral, Matera

In spite of the iconoclastic crises at Byzantium/Constantinople and in Greece itself, notoriously the Byzantine art spread – although differently evolving – not only in Italy but throughout eastern Europe too, along with Orthodox Christianity. No wonder, in Moscow’s Tretyakov Gallery we can find one of the most venerated Glykophilousa icons. It is the Vladimir Mother of God, given by the Church of Constantinople to the Russian Church in about 1131. The Glykophilousa type is characterized by the mutual attitude of mother and 5

son, portrayed cheek against cheek. Not necessarily Mary’s glance is directed out of the picture; she can look at her holy Child. Despite several over-paintings during the centuries, instead “Vladimirskaya”’s tender gaze still looks at us, not without a sad shadow in her eyes. That is, her love is overflowing from the image, not without some a motherly worry. This is something more than a simple concern. It is the premonition of a destiny of sufferance and sacrifice – the price of the Redemption – impending on her creature, as well as on historical mankind. Such a premonition grows a full consciousness in the Deomene, which is the image of an aged Mary, when the drama of the Passion is concluded. Usually, this “Lady of Sorrows” and “Virgin Advocate” at once is represented alone, while gesturing with both hands toward an invisible divine presence, beyond the range of the representation. Her compassionate gaze is directed out, toward the suppliants before the picture, as in order to collect and promote their prayers. This kind of icon was widely diffused in the medieval Rome, such as the celebrated St. Mary of the Altar of Heaven, in the homonymous abbey.

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5 – Vladimir Mother of God, icon detail; Tretyakov Gallery, Moskow

Anyhow, probably the most ancient and beautiful Deomene is the Madonna of San Sisto or S.ta Maria in Tempulo, also dubbed “Madonna with Golden Hands” owing to its gilded hands. Today it is housed in the nunnery of S.ta Maria del Rosario, at Monte Mario. A tradition wants that the icon was carried from Constantinople to Rome, when the Byzantine emperor Leo III interdicted the veneration of religious images in 730. What does mean that it could be far older, even if the first official information about dates back to 930. Surely, it is an early Byzantine artwork, marking the passage from the late antiquity to a full Middle Ages. The deep melancholic eyes of this banished Madonna seem to reflect the trouble of the epochal transition, warning against the danger of any iconoclastic fanaticism. Early Modernity as Our Lady 7

In one sense, we can dare affirm that the Byzantine one was eminently an art of the gaze. The attempt to give a visage and a gaze to the dimension of the sacred was a priority, even to the prejudice of any other aesthetic care. Particularly the Marian icons gave mostly anonymous painters a relevant chance, both because Our Lady is a human being, and for she is a privileged woman in the Christian traditions. Nevertheless, the Renaissance Florentine painter and art historian Giorgio Vasari, in his Lives of the Artists (1551; lives of Cimabue, Giotto, Nicola and Giovanni Pisano), in the name of a classicistic imitation of nature will oppose the “modern style” to the “Greek manner”, “clumsy and out of proportion”. Nor was such a criticism less severe in the writings on painting, by an artist as Leonardo da Vinci.

6 – Madonna of San Sisto, icon detail; S.ta Maria del Rosario Chapel, Rome

Not a little of the Byzantine lesson permeated the Renaissance art and iconography, indeed. If we observe a masterpiece as the Madonna Litta by Leonardo himself and Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio (Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg; circa 1490), likely will recognize the pattern of the ancient Virgo lactans or “Madonna of Milk”: that is, the 8

Byzantine Galaktotrophousa. If we pass to consider the Tempi Madonna (Alte Pinakothek, Munich; about 1508) or the Madonna of the Chair (Palazzo Pitti, Florence; 1514) by Raphael Sanzio, could admire an evolution of the Glykophilousa. Whereas Madonna Litta’s and Madonna Tempi’s gazes are absorbed in contemplating the Baby Christ, once more the Madonna of the Chair looks at us, so directly and intensely that it is difficult to forget her gaze for a long while. In Raphael’s production, we might compare it only with Hypatia’s gaze, in The School of Athens fresco. Far better than renewing an old one, what Renaissance artists were trying to do is transforming Mary’s image into an emblem of early modernity. Along this process, Giovanni Bellini’s work is crucial, for he is both a Venetian artist still directly influenced by late Byzantine art, and one of the most passionate painters of Madonnas. Not by chance, Greek Madonna is titled one of them, currently in the Pinacoteca di Brera at Milan (1460-64). There, the Byzantine customary golden background has been replaced with a uniform dark curtain. It is the beginning of a pictorial usage, which later will lead to the Caravaggism. The conventional colour of the sacred begins to be substituted with one better in accordance with the depths of the psyche, as a more human background for a subconscious archetype such as the Mother and Son. Hardly legible on the upper sides of the central figure, the Greek usual abbreviations MP and ΘY stand for “Mother of God”.

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7 – Raffaello Sanzio, Madonna of the Chair, oil on wood detail; Palazzo Pitti, Florence

In this painting, the little Jesus grips an apple in a hand. Either mother and child are looking down, toward the left corner of the picture. Their glance is somewhat stern and sad, as if beholding from heaven the dramas of history on earth, and almost wondering if even the sacrifice of Redemption had been vain for most people. At Bellini’s times, actually the Protestant Reformation was at hand, with its moral and religious dispute on human free will. Painter’s study and reinterpretation of the Byzantine Marian gaze attains its acme in the Madonna and Child, nowadays in the National Gallery of Art at Washington (ca. 1480-85). Here the background is wholly dark. Dark blue is Mary’s veil too. One of the best ever depicted, her sharp and straight-on glance closely reminds that of so many Byzantine sisters. Also the eyes and face of the Madonna with Child Blessing, another panel by Bellini today in the Galleria dell’Accademia at Venice (1460-64), are terribly beautiful. There too, the background is completely dark. Yet Mary’s and Jesus’ gazes present a peculiarity. They neither look at each other nor in the same direction, but in divergent ones out of the picture, turned respectively toward the left and the right side. That is as if they accomplish different and complementary tasks: to listen to the prayers of the faithful and to give them a holy 10

blessing, so many are their pains or uncertainties. With the exception of the Byzantine Deomene, hitherto we have referred to Madonnas accompanied by the “Son of God” or by saints and angels. Of course, also the Virgin of the Annunciation is frequently represented.

8 – Giovanni Bellini, Greek Madonna, tempera on board detail; Brera Pinacotheque, Milan

Is this a varying declination of the same archetype, such as the Hodegetria, the Glykophilousa and the Deomene, or rather does it represent a different psychological attitude? For its own messianic nature, certainly a representation like that results turned to the future better than to the past. It looks more dynamic than static, more optimistic than pessimistic, somewhat more immanent than transcendent. Even more than to give a visage and a gaze to the sacred, it seems an effort to render a sacred sense to a progressive history. However, at the beginnings of the Modern Age the Annunciation scenes begin to multiply in figurative arts. In this case, the second character is Gabriel, the announcing archangel. 11

According to Luke’s Gospel, that angel is not only a messenger, but a link between heaven and earth too. The space going to be opened between the divine and the human, the supernatural and the natural, even the sacred and the profane dimension, is a dialectic one. With a psychological interpretation, we may hazard to say, the scene to figure and to picture is a meeting between the Self and the Soul. Usually and quite obviously, the announcing angel and the Virgin Annunciate were portrayed facing one another, while looking at each other. Sometimes, at first she tries to elude his gaze and disconcerting message. Such was Mary’s attitude in one of the best known Annunciation paintings, by Simone Martini in the Uffizi Gallery at Florence (1317-47), where the background is still a Byzantine golden one.

9 – Giovanni Bellini, Madonna and Child, oil on wood detail; National Gallery of Art, Washington

In order to recall the entire situation and to focus on the subsequent moments, inside the evangelical narration of the event, we had better read St. Luke’s account again: The virgin’s name was Mary. And the angel came in unto her, and said, “Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.” And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this 12

should be. And the angel said unto her, “Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God. And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: and he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.” Then said Mary unto the angel, “How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?” And the angel answered and said unto her, “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.” And, behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age: and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren. For with God nothing shall be impossible. And Mary said, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word” (1:27-38, King James Version).

10 – Simone Martini, Annunciation, triptych detail; galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

A Feminine Looking Essence

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With a genial innovation, Antonello da Messina will catch that very moment before the “virgin whose name was Mary” is going to reply to the angel, by pronouncing her assent, descending from a free choice. In the Virgin Annunciate currently in the Palazzo Abatellis at Palermo, rather than being a mere interrogative gesture, her hand stretched out of the picture already denotes such an answer and assumption of responsibility, on behalf of the whole mankind. Her “human, all too human” glance expresses the full consciousness of a “sorrowful mystery”, even more than of a joyful one in the acceptance of her unique destiny. Yet the iconographic novelty is not all here. Above all, as in an analogous painting by Antonello in the Alte Pinakothek at Munich (1473), the angel’s figure has been cut off from the picture. We can only imagine him out of it, approximately where we ourselves are. Just as in Bellini’s contemporary Madonnas and Child, of which above, in either Annunciate by the Sicilian painter we have a dark background, and some a nostalgic Byzantine look. At the same time, an extraordinary modernity especially of the Palermo version (c. 1476) makes it an absolute masterpiece. Maybe we are used to associate the birth of modernity with the enigmatic glance of Mona Lisa by Leonardo, or with the panic one of the Venus and of the Spring by Sandro Botticelli. Indeed, the pensive gazes of the religious Palermo Annunciate by Antonello, and of the laic Hypathia in The School of Athens by Raphael, are like two faces of one coin, which is an early modernity as well. Both of them seem to inquire: “What kind of modernity?” Not always, we could give it a positive answer.

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11 – Antonello da Messina, Virgin Annunciate, oil on wood detail; Alte Pinakothek, Munich

In this chosen gallery of early modern female gazes, we might also include that of St. Mary Magdalene by Pietro Perugino in the Palazzo Pitti at Florence (1490s), so intense and melancholic it is, looking toward her left while she is half length portrayed against a dark background. Moreover she is represented alone, as the Annunciates by Antonello. All these images seem to reflect a condition of people’s souls, as well as of their minds, perplexed in the middle of a new epochal transition. We may also wonder where the Palermo Annunciate is really looking at, whether her glance – slightly off to the side – is directed to Gabriel or to us, or else there where neither humans nor presumably even angels clearly see. That is one not yet being, an uncanny zone of the conscience, where the future itself expects to be born. “Virgins Annunciates” as well as “Advocates”, singularly depicted, were not lacking in the past. Usually they were represented on the panels of a polyptych, presupposing the representation respectively of an announcing angel or of the Christ, on symmetric and corresponding ones. The loneliness of Antonello’s Annunciates is something more than an iconographic novelty. They express some solitude and trouble sympathetic with the modern soul, reliably a price of modernity itself. All that will show up in a later Virgin Annunciate, 15

by the Caravaggist painter Bernardo Cavallino, now in the National Gallery of Victoria at Melbourne (c.1645-50). In this less known masterpiece, no longer we can even intercept Mary’s gaze, so much it is lost in a border dimension between “torment and ecstasy”. What resembles a condition consistent with the modern artist, indeed, rather than with Our Lady.

12 – Antonello da Messina, Virgin Annunciate, oil on wood detail; Palazzo Abatellis, Palermo

A possible relevant explanation is that, more the artists strive to give the sacred a visage and a gaze, deeper they go into the representation of the human. By the way, this is in accordance with the main stream of religious Christian art. Nonetheless, we should consider the aniconic point of view too, at least when it does not turn into an indiscriminate destructive iconoclasm, just only running a risk of generating a mostly decorative art. The theory, that in no way the divine could be represented without an approximation or deformation, sounds worthy of high respect. Unfortunately, a dogmatic and extensive application of such an abstract principle is susceptible of precluding a better representation of the human with its natural or historical context, which is the core of any progressive art.

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Of course, all that was not only a question, due to religious interdictions. It was an aesthetic one too, already in the ancient Greek philosophy, in part inherited and reelaborated by monotheistic religions. Then, an aniconic principle was the Platonic doctrine of the “idols”, according to which art is guilty of producing only “copies of copies” of the ultimate reality, that is the transcendent World of Ideas. On the contrary, the Aristotelian criticism argued that the ideal form is immanent in the worldly matter and history. Thus, a true artistic imitation or mimesis might help discern that sacred essence, inside our human existences. The effects of such a process ought to be an intimate purification, or catharsis.

13 – Bernardo Cavallino, Virgin Annunciate, detail; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

If the Aristotelian view still maintains some value, in the history of western art the persistence in representing Madonnas has not only a religious conventional sense. Rather, it is an attempt to render a female countenance to the sacred, within a civilization whose concepts of divinity mainly assumed male theological forms. Not necessarily, the sacred and the divine coincide. They can be different degrees, along an ascension from an immanent to a transcendent perception of the being. Granted that Mary is a real woman, a feminine 17

looking essence may well work as an introduction or intercession at least. And, sometimes, art may be farther sensitive than official theology, of whichever confession it be. Anyway, in her essays the scholar Bissera V. Pentcheva has made clear how the theory of mimesis, otherwise revisited by the Renaissance culture, was already active inside the Byzantine art. What is enough, as to conclude our survey with a Madonna and Child painted by a woman, and housed in the Art Gallery of Wolverhampton. She is the Austrian artist Marianne Stokes, influenced by the British Pre-Raphaelite school. Executed in Dalmatia in 1907-08, particularly this work shows a vague Byzantine iconic nostalgia, beginning from the pictorial technique: tempera on board. A girlish Mary clad with a Dalmatian costume and her plump bimbo return to gaze quietly at us. Yet a background detail is a blackberry bush, branching out with all its thorns. Even more than a presage of Christ’s passion, that looks like the wire used for trench entanglements, in the next First World War. While the image of the “Highly Favoured” – or “Full of Grace” – will become a mass pilgrimage stereotype, the century will manage to renew Jesus’ crown of thorns, as a barbed wire one…

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14 – Marianne Stokes, Madonna and Child, detail; Wolverhampton Art Gallery, Wolverhampton

There is a difference between the emulation of an exemplar, like not seldom in an iconic religious tradition, where imitation may result even better than the real or presumed original, and a stereotyped repetition. All the more reason, this seems true whit a subject as Our Lady’s countenance, when that difference – and the main difficulty, in the rendering – grows between essence and existence. Beyond all, such is the hidden connection to which Mary’s gaze is tending, along with the effort of the visual representation. In this sense an appellation as “Mediatrix”, often referred to her, well expresses the pertinent concept. In fact, she works as a medium and mediator, inside the becoming of the being. To use Jungian terms, her figure represents a projection of the eternal soul and a historical person at once. Byzantine iconographers believed the original exemplars of Marian icons, they tried to imitate, had been pictured by St. Luke. That is why those models are also called Lukan 19

icons. Another tradition tells such alleged portraits were “acheropite”, miraculously not painted by human hand. Later, St. Luke has been figured while portraying the Madonna, with an angel inspiring or guiding his hand. The cut-off angel is back at his job, as if he could not forget the glance of the Virgin. Yet these legends own a pious sense. Her image is an interface between the human and the divine, and something else too. In an afterword to his book The Spirit of Utopia, the 20th century philosopher Ernst Bloch adopted a popular and impressive metaphor: there is a zone at the foot of a lighthouse, which even its light cannot clear. Whereas we scan the horizon, likely it is there, where Mary’s gaze is turned to.

15 – Guercino, St. Luke Displaying a Hodegetria Icon: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City; 1652-53

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