The Miraculous Flying House of Loreto: Spreading Catholicism in the Early Modern World by Karin Vélez

Author:Karin Vélez [Vélez, Karin]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: History, World, Europe, Renaissance, Modern, General, Religion, Christianity, Catholic, Christian Theology
ISBN: 9780691174006
Google: P2hyDwAAQBAJ
Amazon: B07DR6LQFV
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2018-12-11T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

Anonymous Renovators of Icons

IN THE EARLY eighteenth century, a carved image stood in for the Virgin of Loreto at a church nearly six thousand miles across the Atlantic Ocean from her Italian shrine. The “large wooden statue of Our Lady” graced an altar at the first Jesuit mission among the Moxos Indians in the Spanish Viceroyalty of Peru (figure 6.1).1 There was precious little to associate this three-dimensional Marian representation in the Moxos region with the dark, crowned statue back at the Loreto sanctuary (figure 6.2).2 Closer to home, a more well-known, older piece of artwork also lacked clear attributes to associate it with the statue at Loreto. Around 1605 the Italian artist Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1573–1610) painted an image of the Virgin of Loreto for display in a chapel dedicated to her, the Cavalletti Chapel of Rome’s Church of Sant’Agostino (figure 6.3).3 Labeled simply “Madonna of the Pilgrims,” this likeness of the Virgin of Loreto is white-skinned and dark-haired, an Italianate beauty. She stands at the threshold of a house, looking down at pilgrims who kneel at her feet while she carefully balances a well-fed, blond, and naked baby Jesus. Caravaggio’s representation depicts Mary as “warmly human … a housewife, welcoming the pilgrims in a dark Roman vicolo.”4 But like the distant statue on the American frontier, Caravaggio’s Madonna was white, not matching the dark shade of Loreto’s miracle-working statue; it did not include features to explicitly identify it with Loreto; and it was composed locally instead of being exported directly from Loreto.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.