When I was in the Art History Museum on our group tour, it really struck me how Mary and the Baby Jesus were often pictured as white skinned and blonde. So I went back later and took pictures of all the images of Mary and the Baby Jesus I could find. I only looked for images of Mary and Baby Jesus together, though, because trying to take pictures of every painting with Mary or Jesus in them would have taken all day. Here’s a list of all the paintings of the two of them together that I found.
- St. John Miniature Altar by Hans Memling around 1485-90
- Holy Family by Anthonis van Dyck 1626-1628
- The Holy Family Beneath an Apple Tree by Peter Paul Reubens around 1630-32
- Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in Prayer before the Madonna by Jan von den Hoeke around 1650
- Flanders, Brabant, and Hainaut venerate the Madonna by Theodor van Thulden 1654
- Mary and Child by Albrecht Altdorfer pained 1531
- The Holy Family with Saint Agapitus by Albrecht Altdorfer 1515
- The Holy Family by Martin Schongauer around 1480-90
- Madonna with the Pear by Albrecht Dürer 1512
- The Holy Family by Bernhard Strigel circa 1520
- Mary with the Child and Two Angels by Sebastiano Mainardi 1475-1500
- St. Jerome Altar by Antonio Vivarini 1441
- Mary with the Child by Maestro del Bambino Vispo 1430-40
- “Pala di San Cassiano” by Antonello da Messina 1475-76
- Homage to Christ in the Temple by Giovanni Bellini 1490-1500
- Adoration of the Shepherds by the Giorgione Workshop around 1510
- Mary with Child and Saints by Palma Vecchio around 1520-22
- The Hellbrunn Madonna by Antonio Allegri called Correggio around 1512-14
- Madonna with Child and the Saints Catherine and Jacob the Elder by Lorenzo Lotto around 1527-33
- Mary with Child and Four Saints by Perugino in 1493
- Holy Family by Francesco di Christofano known as Franciabigio around 1515
- Mary with Child and the Saints Francis, Catherine, and Jon by Francesco Raibolini known as Francia around 1504
- Mary with Child by Fra Bartolomeo around 1514-1516
- Mary with the Child and Two Saints by Pietro Vannucci called Perugino around 1493-1495
- The Madonna of the Meadow by Raphael 1505 or 1506
- Holy Family with the Young John by Raphael and Workshop around 1513-14
- Depiction of Christ in the Temple by Fra Bartolomeo 1516
- Mary with Child by Bernardino Luini around 1510
- Holy Family attributed to Marcello Venusti circa 1560-70
- The Holy Family with St. Anna and the Boy John by Bronzino around 1540
- Adoration of the Kings by Bernardo Cavallino around 1640
- Mary with the Child by Carlo Maratta around 1660
- Mary with Child and John the Baptist as a Boy by Carlo Maratta 1704
- Adoration of the Kings by Carrado Giaquinto around 1740-45
- Madonna of the Rosary by Michelangelo Merisi known as Caravaggio around 1604-5
- Rest on the Flight to Egypt by Orazio Lomi Gentileschi around 1626-8
- Virgin Mary with Child and St. Anne by Giovanni Battista Caracciolo known as Battistello around 1633
I took pictures of all of the ones I listed (I may have missed a few), but I’ll share some of my favorites. Here’s Bronzino’s The Holy Family with St. Anna and the Boy John. I like this one simply because Mary’s skin is snow white and her hair and Baby Jesus’ hair is red. This one amuses me for how far off the mark it is.
Then there’s Sebastiano Mainardi’s Mary with the Child and Two Angels. This one is interesting because it shows the bourgeois trend of the “Madonna lactans” (nursing mother). Mary and the baby are also very blond. The clothes are “very similar to that worn by young Florentine women at the time” (quote from the sign nearby), which is also odd. But what really cinches this one as humorous for me are the facial expressions. Not one of the four is looking at any other person and they all look bored.
Anthonis van Dyck’s Holy Family I find amusing because of the ages of the Mary and Joseph. Mary looks about 30 in this picture with a two-year-old Baby Jesus and Joseph looks about 45. Neither of these ages would be correct in regard to when people got married in this time period. Mary should be a teenager and Joseph should be late twenties, early thirties. And Mary here also looks overweight, which was the beauty image of the time when this was painted, but looks odd for a woman who had to work for her bread.
I also like Fra Bartolomeo’s Mary with Child. The hair is still blond, but this actually looks like the relationship of a mother and child. The way Baby Jesus is holding Mary just has something extra special about it.
And of course I have to show Raphael’s famous The Madonna of the Meadow. Her clothing is more simple in style, though her hair is still blonde, but again Jesus looks like a real child as he plays with his (first?) cousin.
Then there’s my second favorite: Carlo Maratta’s Mary with the Child. There’s something so touching and warm and real about this one. The look in her eyes is just perfect. Her hair is brown and her clothing is much simpler. And her age is much closer to how young she would have been.
And then there’s my favorite: Orazio Lomi Gentileschi’s Rest on the Flight to Egypt. Sadly this isn’t the best picture of the painting, but let me say why I like it. Mary’s clothes are still fairly simple and her hair is brown. She might be a bit older than she should be (and Joseph certainly is), but the feeling of this painting is just right somehow for me. This shows the exhausted husband fast asleep while Mary wakes to feed her child as they flee for their lives.
But overall, I did not find a single image showing a darker skinned or darker haired Mary or Baby Jesus. I did realize as I did this that Mary is more often painted by Catholics, particularly Italians. (Also, why do Italians change their names so often?) But very interesting to note is the gap during the years between the upheaval caused by Martin Luther’s 95 Theses and nearing the end of the Thirty Years War. It’s not exact, but there are lots of paintings of Mary and Baby Jesus before about 1525 and quite a few after the 1630s, but drastically less in between.