Mary: Images of the Holy Mother Reviews

Mary: Images of the Holy Mother is Jacqueline Orsini's beautiful, succinct, pictorial survey of art history's many incarnations of the Virgin Mother, from a fresco in the Roman catacombs to a modern mural in San Francisco. The book is organized chronologically, collecting reproductions of Mary's constantly transforming image in Byzantine, Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Counter Reformation, and various 20th century movements. Artists represented in the book include Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Van Gogh, Chagall, and Gauguin. At every stage in this evolution, Orsini's compilation of images is guided by her conviction that "Mary transcends the media, the temporal and regional restrictions, and human limitations that govern her image in any one era. The meaning of the icon outweighs the individual artist or epoch." Therefore, this book becomes an occasion for inspiration; turning its pages provides an experience of communion. Orsini writes, "As we look at Mary, she looks back at us through the eyes of art." --Paul Power