The Madonna and Child is one of the central icons of Christianity. After some initial resistance and controversy, the formula "Mother of God" (Theotokos) was adopted officially by the Christian Church at the Council of Ephesus, 431. The earliest representations of Mother and Child were developed in the Eastern Empire, where despite an iconoclastic strain in culture that rejected physical representations as "idols", respect for venerated images was expressed in the repetition of a narrow range of highly conventionalized types, the repeated images familiar as icons (Greek "image").

In the West, hieratic Byzantine models were closely followed in the Early Middle Ages, but with the increased importance of the cult of the Virgin in the 12th and 13th centuries a wide variety of types developed to satisfy a flood of more intensely personal forms of piety. In the usual Gothic and Renaissance formulas the Virgin Mary sits with the Infant Jesus on her lap, or enfolded in her arms. In earlier representations the Virgin is enthroned, and the Child may be fully aware, raising his hand to offer blessing. In a 15th century Italian variation, a baby John the Baptist looks on.

Late Gothic sculptures of the Virgin and Child may show a standing virgin with the child in her arms. Iconography varies between public images and private images supplied on a smaller scale and meant for personal devotion in the chamber: the Virgin suckling the Child (such as the Madonna Litta) is an image largely confined to private devotional icons.

• Madonna and Child by Duccio, painting around the year 1300
• Madonna and Child by Giovanni Bellini, painted in the 1470s.
• The Virgin and Child with St. Anne by Leonardo da Vinci
• The Benois Madonna by Leonardo da Vinci

External link

• Metroplitan Museum: The cult of the Virgin Mary in the Middle Ages

Christian art | Depictions of the Virgin Mary | Eastern Orthodox icons

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