When all you can do is "Behold"! - and all you want to say is "Thank You".

Recent absence from here has been because I have been on a work related visit to Austria on behalf of the University. But there was time for some sightseeing, and my kind hosts arranged for me to visit the Kunsthistorisches in Vienna.

 
Some of the finest paintings in Europe are held there, and one of them I have wanted to see for a long time. The Madonna of the Meadows is widely recognised as one of the finest paintings by Raphael, and one of the most influential images of Mary for subsequent artists. I've written about it here before, but seeing it is an altogether different experience. John's Gospel uses several different words for seeing, because he recognised there are several different ways of looking, gazing, contemplating - and when he means to see and recognise the truth and reality and beauty of what he says he uses the word we translate into English as "Behold"! And the mood is both imperative and an invitation. Indeed in chapter One of John's Gospel John the Baptist says "Behold the Lamb of God" and Jesus says to Andrew and Peter "Come and see".

This painting does the same, because the two children represent these same two imperatives, Behold, and come and see. But actually it is Raphael who commands attention here. To stand before this painting is to encounter some of the deepest religious truth in Christian tradition, mediated by beauty and depicted as goodness. The three late medieval transcendentals of beauty, truth and goodness are here distilled into a painting of profound and persuasive theological image. The incarnation as infinity diminished to infancy, the red of the flowers complementing the red robe and both reminding of the passion and atonement, in the background the human world of city, land and sea. And dominating yet conjoining sky and earth, the face of Mary, her smile wistful, the face pensive, her eyes looking down the trajectory of the cross to her child, and the face subtle and emotionally ambiguous - there is tenderness, and determination, acceptance and sadness, the surrender and resistance of love shown in two hands that hold her child, while the infant Jesus has one hand on her and one gripping the cross. 

But I am not offering analysis - merely finding inadequate words for the fifteen minutes I spent being drawn into a theological world made real by image and symbol, the genius and gift of the artist illustrating a quite different and soul searchingly persuasive articulation of Christian truth that needs no such analysis. The above is not me daring to say what the painting means, but what the painting said as it addressed me and commanded attentiveness and stillness and obedient looking. A painting like this has its own way of announcing great truth with the imperative word, "Behold". So I did.

The Museum allows non flash photography, but it isn't always possible to get the angle right for a photo - maybe the imperfect photo is a recognition that you don't take with you anything other than the photo- the real experience is standing there, beholding, wondering, and praying.

This close-up shows a Renaissance artist's portrait of the Three Transcendentals, Beauty, Truth and Goodness, expressed in the complex miracle of a human face. In the long tradition of honouring Mary as the mother of the Saviour of the World, few approached the vision of Raphael. I'm no authority, but I doubt if anyone surpassed it. 

Comments

[Perpetua]

I'm ashamed to say this isn't a painting I'm familiar with, so I'm very grateful to have been introduced to it by your fine post.