“Madonna and Child”
(by Carlo Crivelli (1480) I bought this print in Mexico.)
In 1973, at age twenty-six, I visited Mexico City, my first time in a foreign country. I saw Aztec pyramids, ancient dragon sculptures, and Diego Rivera’s murals. Then I found Carlo Crivelli’s painting of the Virgin Mary. Sure, sure, Crivelli is a fifteenth century Italian, and the painting that I especially like is in New York, not in Mexico City. However, one afternoon I wandered into a used bookstore and found a stack of folios of European art prints. I bought twenty-five folios even though the owner raised the price from fifty cents to a buck apiece when he saw a gullible gringo. But even at a buck, I’d never find a bargain like that in the States, so I didn’t mind their price increase. Each booklet had twenty pages of reproductions, with one or more foldouts measuring 21” x 13.5” (that’s two inches shorter and two and a half inches wider than a Playboy magazine foldout).
Of all the reproductions I’d purchased, Crivelli’s “Madonna and Child” was my favorite because of the many symbols and exquisite details. Mary’s veil and gown are intricately detailed fabric, appropriate for the Queen of Heaven. The cucumber symbolizes fertility; the apple, the sin of Adam and Eve; the fly, death and sin; the goldfinch, the passion of Jesus and redemption.
During the Middle Ages, the Virgin Mary had the status of a goddess. When the Medieval Mary Cult encouraged worship of the Mother of Jesus, it indirectly honored all mothers and, to an extent, raised the status of women in general—important at a time that the patriarchal culture honored warriors who spent their time slaughtering, raping, and pillaging. Mother Mary, it was believed, overflowed with pity for poor sinners and was powerful enough to convince her son to forgive their transgressions and not condemn the miscreants to eternal fire.
“Rose of Heaven”
In the 1970s and 1980s, magnets held the “Madonna and Child” on my refrigerator door where I could examine it every time I ate a meal. Daily contact with this print made me familiar with its details in a way I never could have been if I’d only seen the original in the Metropolitan Museum of New York. True, the print was a copy, but I lived with it. Can’t do that with the original. Only by a leisurely examination of an intricate painting detail by detail can a viewer begin to appreciate its magnificence. To fully experience art, posters are a must. Also books and internet images. The museum experience alone is inadequate because seldom does the viewer take the time to examine each work, detail by detail.
Those Crivelli posters inspired me back in the seventies and eighties. Now all available wall space in the house is filled with my own art. And since those posters were printed on cheap paper, they’re currently crumbling away. But before they disintegrated, I scanned the Crivelli print into my computer. Then I made the Madonna and Child evolve into a spiritual abstraction, a symbolic Rose of Heaven. (At least, I hope my abstraction is spiritual.)
[The internet has an excellent reproduction of Crivelli’s “Madonna and Child,” better than my old poster. Check it out.]
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