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unusual facts about Virgin and Child



Early Christian art and architecture

Although borrowings of motifs such as the Virgin and Child from pagan religious art had been pointed out as far back as the Protestant Reformation, when John Calvin and his followers gleefully used them as a stick with which to beat all Christian art, the belief of André Grabar, Andreas Alföldi, Ernst Kantorowicz and other early 20th-century art historians that Roman Imperial imagery was a much more significant influence "has become universally accepted".

Morgan Owen

His Laudian views and the construction of the baroque south porch of St. Mary's University Church in Oxford (together with a statue of the Virgin and Child) precipitated his overthrow.

Nicholas Stone

The obvious European, and thus Catholic, design of the porch was later to cause problems for the porch's patron Archbishop Laud because at the centre of the scrolled pediment was placed a statue of the Virgin and Child, a composition considered to be Roman Catholic idolatry, and later used against the Archbishop at his trial for treason in 1641 following the grand Remonstrance.

Portsmouth Cathedral

The north tower transept contains a ceramic plaque of the Virgin and Child by the Florentine sculptor Andrea della Robbia.


see also

Antonio Raggi

He completed the stucco decoration of San Tomaso di Villanova in Castel Gandolfo (1660-1), the stucco decoration of Bernini's Sant'Andrea 1662-1665), the statues of Saint Bernardino and Pope Alexander VII Chigi for Duomo di Siena and the Virgin and Child in Saint Joseph des Carmes in Paris (1650–51).

Ashby de la Zouch Castle

Surviving artworks from the former period include for an altarpiece, The Virgin and Child with Saints and Donors, or the Donne Triptych as painted by Hans Memling in circa 1478.

Eremo delle Carceri

St. Bernardine also built a small church called Santa Maria delle Carceri (differs from a church of the same name at Prato), today with an altarpiece fresco of the Virgin and Child, which extended the earlier chapel.

Francesco da Sangallo

Other works include the effigy of Bishop Leonardo Bonafede, which lies on the pavement of the church of the Certosa near Florence, and the group of the Virgin and Child and St Anne, executed in 1526 for the altar of Orsanmichele.

Giacinto Calandrucci

He also painted two works for the main altar and the Cimini Chapel of Roman church of Sant'Antonio dei Portoghesi, a Virgin and Child with St Anne and Saints in frescoes and canvases in San Bonaventura (before 1686), a Holy Family with St Anne and St Anthony of Padua, both in San Paolo alla Regola (c. 1700), and frescoes in Santa Maria dell’Orto (c. 1700–05).

Lepus cornutus

Jan Brueghel the Elder, Virgin and Child Surrounded by Flowers and Fruit, now in the Prado museum; the horned hare can be seen at the bottom right

Museo Matris Domini

There is another series of frescoes of great emotive and narrative quality, representing Jesus among the Doctors, the Baptism, the Virgin and Child Enthroned, Saint Catherine of Alexandria upon the Wheel, Saint Martin and the Pauper, Jesus entering Jerusalem, and the Miracle of the reanimation of Napoleone Orsini by Saint Dominic, showing the young man falling from his horse.

St Mary's Church, Hampstead

No taller than houses numbered 4 and 5 to either side, the Church’s distinctive façade with bell tower and statue of Virgin and Child was designed by architect William Wardell as the first addition to the original building at the time the law was changed to allow bells to be rung from Catholic churches in 1852.