The Madonna in Art

In old churches across Italy, the Madonna’s face could seem endlessly repeated: gold ground, stiff blue veil, solemn eyes. Though legends credited these portraits to St. Luke, a gentler face by Jacopo Bellini hints at a new way of seeing the mother and child.

In The Madonna in Art, Estelle M. Hurll turns from sacred legends to the art itself, tracing how painters gave form to motherhood across centuries and styles. Byzantine icons hold the Virgin in austere stillness; Renaissance artists bring her closer, with a mother’s tenderness and a child’s eager touch. From simple portrait Madonnas to queens enthroned, Hurll asks us to look beyond the symbols and the changing fashions of painting. What can a Madonna’s face—and the way she holds her child—tell us about the age that imagined her?

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