Virgin of Mercy - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Virgin of Mercy is a subject in Catholic art, showing a group of people sheltering for protection under the outspread cloak of the Virgin Mary

Mary (mother of Jesus)

Mary , commonly referred to as "Saint Mary", "Mother Mary", the "Virgin Mary", the "Blessed Virgin Mary", or "Mary, Mother of God", was a Jewish woman of Nazareth in Galilee...

. It was especially popular in Italy from the 13th to 16th centuries, often as a specialised form of votive portrait, and is also found in other countries and later art, especially Catalonia

Catalonia

Catalonia is an autonomous community in northeastern Spain, with the official status of a "nationality" of Spain. Catalonia comprises four provinces: Barcelona, Girona, Lleida, and Tarragona. Its capital and largest city is Barcelona. Catalonia covers an area of 32,114 km² and has an...

and Latin America. In Italian it is known as the Madonna della Misericordia (Madonna of Mercy), in German as the Schutzmantelmadonna (Sheltering-cloak Madonna), and in French as the Vièrge au Manteau or Vierge de Miséricorde (Virgin with a cloak or Virgin of Mercy).

Image and origins

Usually the Virgin is standing alone, though if angels hold up the cloak she is free to hold the infant Christ. The people sheltered normally kneel, and are of necessity shown usually at a much smaller scale. These may represent all members of Christian society, with royal crowns, mitre

Mitre

The mitre , also spelled miter, is a type of headwear now known as the traditional, ceremonial head-dress of bishops and certain abbots in the Roman Catholic Church, as well as in the Anglican Communion, some Lutheran churches, and also bishops and certain other clergy in the Eastern Orthodox...

s and a Papal tiara

Papal Tiara

The Papal Tiara, also known incorrectly as the Triple Tiara, or in Latin as the Triregnum, in Italian as the Triregno and as the Trirègne in French, is the three-tiered jewelled papal crown, supposedly of Byzantine and Persian origin, that is a prominent symbol of the papacy...

in the front rows, or represent the local population. The subject was often commissioned by specific groups such as families, confraternities, guilds or convents or abbeys, and then the figures represent these specific groups, as shown by their dress, or by the 15th century individual portraits. Sometimes arrows rain down from above, which the cloak prevents from reaching the people.

Probably the oldest version known is a small panel by Duccio

Duccio

Duccio di Buoninsegna was one of the most influential Italian artists of his time. Born in Siena, Tuscany, he worked mostly with pigment and egg tempera and like most of his contemporaries painted religious subjects...

of ca. 1280, with three Franciscan

Franciscan

Most Franciscans are members of Roman Catholic religious orders founded by Saint Francis of Assisi. Besides Roman Catholic communities, there are also Old Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, ecumenical and Non-denominational Franciscan communities....

friars under the cloak Here the Virgin sits, only one side of the cloak is extended, and the Virgin holds her child on her knee with her other hand.

The immediate inspiration of the iconography

Iconography

Iconography is the branch of art history which studies the identification, description, and the interpretation of the content of images. The word iconography literally means "image writing", and comes from the Greek "image" and "to write". A secondary meaning is the painting of icons in the...

comes from a vision reported in the Dialogus Miraculorum of the Cistercian Caesar of Heisterbach

Caesar of Heisterbach

Caesarius of Heisterbach , sometimes erroneously called in English Caesar of Heisterbach , was the prior of the former Cistercian Heisterbach Abbey, in the Siebengebirge near the little town of Oberdollendorf, Germany.He is best known as...

which circulated widely from about 1230. Beyond that, the origins of the image may relate to rituals and a vision or miracle connected with a famous icon in the Blachernae Church

Church of St. Mary of Blachernae (Istanbul)

Saint Mary of Blachernae is an Eastern Orthodox church in Istanbul...

in Constantinople

Constantinople

Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...

. This gave rise in Russian Orthodoxy to the Pokrov icons, although the image is not found in Byzantine art

Byzantine art

Byzantine art is the term commonly used to describe the artistic products of the Byzantine Empire from about the 5th century until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453....

. In these the thought is similar, but the image less literal - the veil with which the Virgin protects mankind is small and just held in her hands. The Western image is also found in some Eastern Orthodox icons, one of a number of Western iconographic features that infiltrated Orthodox art, whether in Cyprus

Cyprus

Cyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is a Eurasian island country, member of the European Union, in the Eastern Mediterranean, east of Greece, south of Turkey, west of Syria and north of Egypt. It is the third largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.The earliest known human activity on the...

under the Crusaders or 16th century Eastern Europe.

Usually the image, whether in sculpture or painting, stands by itself, but in the most famous example, the Madonna della Misericordia altarpiece in Sansepolcro

Sansepolcro

Sansepolcro , is a town and comune in Tuscany, Italy, in the province of Arezzo.Situated on the upper reaches of the Tiber river, Borgo was the birthplace of the painters Piero della Francesca, Raffaellino del Colle and Angiolo Tricca...

by Piero della Francesca

Piero della Francesca

Piero della Francesca was a painter of the Early Renaissance. As testified by Giorgio Vasari in his Lives of the Artists, to contemporaries he was also known as a mathematician and geometer. Nowadays Piero della Francesca is chiefly appreciated for his art. His painting was characterized by its...

, of 1445-62, the subject is the central panel of a large altarpiece

Altarpiece

An altarpiece is a picture or relief representing a religious subject and suspended in a frame behind the altar of a church. The altarpiece is often made up of two or more separate panels created using a technique known as panel painting. It is then called a diptych, triptych or polyptych for two,...

, with a smaller Crucifixion above it, and many other panels. In the Spanish The Virgin of the Navigators
The Virgin of the Navigators
The Virgin of the Navigators is a painting by Spanish artist Alejo Fernández, created as the central panel of an altarpiece for the chapel of the Casa de Contratación building in Seville, southern Spain...

of the 1530s, where those sheltered are a group connected with the Spanish voyages to the New World

New World

The New World is one of the names used for the Western Hemisphere, specifically America and sometimes Oceania . The term originated in the late 15th century, when America had been recently discovered by European explorers, expanding the geographical horizon of the people of the European middle...

, including American indigenous peoples, the group are shown over a panorama of ships at rest in a harbour.

In Germany an almost identical image was used featuring Saint Ursula

Saint Ursula

Saint Ursula is a British Christian saint. Her feast day in the extraordinary form calendar of the Catholic Church is October 21...

, usually holding her attribute

Attribute

Attribute may refer to:* In research, a characteristic of an object - see attribute * In philosophy, property , an abstraction of a characteristic of an entity or substance...

of an arrow to avoid confusion.

The image came in for special derision from Martin Luther

Martin Luther

Martin Luther was a German priest, professor of theology and iconic figure of the Protestant Reformation. He strongly disputed the claim that freedom from God's punishment for sin could be purchased with money. He confronted indulgence salesman Johann Tetzel with his Ninety-Five Theses in 1517...

, who compared it to "a hen with her chicks".

Other uses

The term "Virgin of Mercy" is found in a number of other contexts not directly related to the image. It is a common translation of the Eleusa

Eleusa

The Eleusa is a type of depiction of the Virgin Mary in which the infant Jesus Christ is nestled against her cheek.-Depictions:...

type of icon of the Virgin and Child. The Virgin of Mercy is patron saint of Barcelona

Barcelona

Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...

, celebrated in the week-long La Mercè

La Mercè

La Mercè is the annual festival of the city of Barcelona in Catalonia, Spain. It has been an official city holiday since 1871, when the local government first organized a program of special activities to observe the Roman Catholic feast day of Our Lady of Mercy, La Mare de Déu de la Mercè in...

festival each year, but in this role is not especially associated with this type of image. The Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mercy

Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mercy

The Royal, Celestial and Military Order of Our Lady of Mercy and the Redemption of the Captives also known as Our Lady of Ransom is a Roman Catholic religious order established in 1218 by St...

, founded, also in Barcelona, in 1218 by Saint Peter Nolasco, has used the image but is not particularly associated with it.

In Santería

Santería

Santería is a syncretic religion of West African and Caribbean origin influenced by Roman Catholic Christianity, also known as Regla de Ocha, La Regla Lucumi, or Lukumi. Its liturgical language, a dialect of Yoruba, is also known as Lucumi....

, the Virgin of Mercy is syncretized

Syncretism

Syncretism is the combining of different beliefs, often while melding practices of various schools of thought. The term means "combining", but see below for the origin of the word...

with Obatala

Obatala

In the religion of the Yoruba people, Obàtálá is the creator of human bodies, which were supposedly brought to life by Olorun's breath.Obàtálá is also the owner of all ori or heads. Any orisha may lay claim to an individual, but until that individual is initiated into the priesthood of that orisha,...

Image and origins

Other uses

See also