Baby Jesus and Virgin Mary.

The Bible recounts the miraculous virgin birth of Jesus, a central event in Christian theology. Let’s delve into the biblical accounts:

Virgin Birth of Jesus:

In the Gospel of Matthew, it is written that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was betrothed to Joseph. Before they came together as husband and wife, Mary was found to be pregnant by the Holy Spirit. Joseph, being a righteous man, initially planned to discreetly send her away. However, an angel appeared to him in a dream, reassuring him that the child conceived in Mary was indeed from the Holy Spirit.

The angel instructed Joseph to take Mary as his wife, and they named the child Jesus, signifying that He would save people from their sins. This fulfilled the prophecy: “Behold, the virgin will conceive and give birth to a Son, and they shall name Him Immanuel,” which means “God with us” .

The Gospel of Luke also narrates the story of the Annunciation, where the angel Gabriel announces to Mary that she will conceive a child by the Holy Spirit. Mary’s response is one of faith and submission: “Let it be done to me according to your word.”

Thus, Mary becomes the vessel through which God enters the world as the incarnate Son, Jesus.

Mary, Mother of Jesus:

Mary is described as a virgin chosen by God to conceive Jesus through the Holy Spirit. She gave birth to Jesus in Bethlehem and raised Him in Nazareth. Mary was present in Jerusalem during Jesus’ crucifixion and later with the apostles after His ascension .

Artistic Depictions:

Throughout history, artists have portrayed the infant Jesus and the Virgin Mary in various forms. These artistic representations capture the reverence and awe associated with this sacred event. Found in hundreds of Catholic churches across Europe and Latin America, the Black Madonna, a depiction of the Virgin Mary with dark skin, remains one of the most mysterious and controversial religious icons. She has a complex history and many possible meanings.

The most commonly accepted theory deems the images' skin colour to be accidental: these Madonnas were once white, but have darkened through ageing and exposure to candle soot.

This explanation is as much anecdotal as it is a symptom of cultural whitewashing.

It is hard to believe that all these images, represented in various materials, would have aged in a particular way that capriciously turned only their faces and hands black. (The same phenomenon has not been observed in equal proportion in representations of Jesus Christ.)

Another explanation associates the Black Madonna with a biblical verse, saying that it refers to the words of the Bride in the Song of Solomon: “I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem.” This theory at least accepts a clear intention behind the blackness of the images.

Black Madonna or Black Virgin means dark-skinned Mary and Jesus in statues or paintings. They are in Catholic and Orthodox lands, mostly in Europe.

Black Madonnas: Origin, History, Controversy
– Michael Duricy

There are black Madonnas and Black Madonnas. The former applies generically to any dark-skin-colored representation of Mary. Others came to prominence only recently. In the latter case we are dealing with sometimes century-old artwork of Africans whose artistic and spiritual values have been ignored for a long time.

Did Medieval artists whitewash the Virgin Mary?

Medieval artists did intentionally whitewash the Virgin Mary, but the perception of her appearance evolved over time. Let’s delve into the complexities of this topic:

The Belle Verrière Window at Chartres Cathedral:

Professor Rachel Fulton Brown argued that medieval people were not racist, using the stained glass window known as the Belle Verrière at Chartres Cathedral as evidence.

This is not true; in that particular image Mary does not have dark skin, medieval European Christians did not generally think of her as dark-skinned, and many medieval people were racist (though race and racism were very different then).

There is a bigger question, however. Did medieval European Christians think of biblical characters—especially figures like the Virgin—as Jewish or dark-skinned? And what does that mean about their perception of race?

Fulton Brown interpreted the central figure in the window as a dark-skinned Virgin Mary, implying that medieval Europeans understood her as a dark-skinned Jewish woman.

Restoration work in 1906 replaced the glass, making the Virgin’s face lighter. Thus, she was not dark-skinned, and the window itself is not even medieval.

Depicting Blackness in Medieval European Art:

Over the Middle Ages, there was a developing tradition of depicting blackness or blacks in art.

However, the association of the Virgin Mary with the Latin phrase “nigra sum sed formosa” (meaning “I am black but beautiful”) did not necessarily lead to her portrayal as a sub-Saharan African woman.

Byzantine artists, for instance, depicted Mary in Marian-blue robes against gold-leaf backgrounds, emphasizing her spiritual significance.

Reformation and Destruction of Images:

During the Reformation, many images of the Virgin were destroyed as Protestantism rejected the medieval Church’s overemphasis and sexualization of Mary.

While medieval artists did intentionally whitewash the Virgin Mary, their depictions evolved over time, influenced by cultural, religious, and artistic factors . The perception of her appearance was multifaceted, and it’s essential to consider the historical context when examining medieval art and its representations of race and identity.

People of Colour in Medieval European Art

Even though the Virgin was not depicted as a person of colour, many people of colour are depicted in medieval images—if you want to explore some, see the excellent series The Image of the Black in Western Art, or the popular Tumblr site People of Color in European Art History.

It is clear that over the course of the Middle Ages, there was a developing tradition of depicting blackness in medieval European art. But why, if the Virgin Mary was associated with the ‘nigra sum sed formosa’ text, did medieval artists not depict her as a sub-Saharan African woman? Was it because dark-skinned people were unknown to the artists?

In twelfth-century Western Europe when the Chartres windows were made, images of sub-Saharan African people were rare. But they become more common in the later Middle Ages, reflecting increased contact between people of different cultures. While the ‘nigra sum sed formosa’ text was used in medieval liturgies which celebrated the Virgin Mary, it was also associated with the Queen of Sheba, who is depicted as dark-skinned in some medieval works of art from the twelfth century onwards.

However, in other works, the Queen of Sheba is depicted with light skin, as in one late-twelfth-century window at Canterbury Cathedral. In one fifteenth-century manuscript she was originally depicted as light skinned, with blonde hair, but her skin was overpainted by a later illuminator, suggesting that the later artist was aware of conflicting models for depicting the Old Testament queen.

It seems, then, that in spite of being familiar with the use in liturgy of the ‘nigra sum sed formosa’ text that associated the Virgin Mary with the ‘black but beautiful’ woman of the Song of Songs, medieval artists actively chose to depict her with light skin—at least in the vast majority of Western European medieval images.

Medieval Whitewashing?

Should this then be interpreted as evidence for medieval racism? Were medieval Christian artists deliberately whitewashing a woman they believed to have dark skin in order to recreate her in their own image?

For the most part, medieval artists depicted the Virgin and other biblical characters in clothing and settings which mirrored their own—although that changed a bit in the later Middle Ages, when some artists attempted to historicise biblical depictions. But this does not mean that the practice of depicting Mary as a medieval European light-skinned woman was intended to remove an existing understanding of Mary as a person of colour from the visual record.

Medieval artists did not inherit a tradition of depicting the Virgin with dark skin. The ‘nigra sum sed formosa’ text from the Song of Songs was not necessarily understood literally. Like other Old Testament texts, it was interpreted typologically—as prefiguring the New Testament—and may never have been understood as meaning that the Virgin had dark skin.

Although some of the black Madonna statues have been inscribed with the text from the Song of Songs, more research needs to be done to determine whether the inscriptions were made at the same time as the statues, or whether they were added later .

Moreover, dark skin did not always have negative connotations for medieval Christians. The black magus at the Nativity and St. Maurice were understood to be sub-Saharan African people, and they were revered figures in the later Middle Ages.

But as other contributors have explored in their articles in this series, some medieval European thinkers did equate blackness with evil. Like I said at the beginning of this post: it’s complicated. Not all medieval Europeans believed the same things.

Nonetheless, in creating the Virgin and Christ in their own image, medieval Christian artists, perhaps unwittingly, produced a visual world where people of colour were clearly framed as other. In doing so, they may not have been racist in the modern sense, but the legacy of their imagery was centuries in the making in which the Virgin and Christ were made white.