Picturing Mary

View of the museum from outside showing the Neoclassical building from one corner. The building is a tan-colored stone with an arched doorway, long vertical windows, and detailed molding around the roof.
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Painting with Confidence: Early Female Self-Portraiture
Posted: July 15, 2015
Category: Picturing Mary
Self-portraits convey more than just appearances—they affirm an artist’s identity. In the 16th and 17th centuries, women artists made portraits of themselves in their studios. Self-portraiture helped legitimize women as...
Painting of a trio of smiling musicians. On the left, a man wears a large black hat and plays the violin. On the right sits a man in orange wearing a feathered hat and playing the mandolin. In the center sits a woman dressed in black, opening her mouth in song.

Expanding Mary’s narrative: Apocryphal influences in Picturing Mary
Posted: April 9, 2015
Category: Picturing Mary
For being the mother of Christ, Mary is a surprisingly scarce figure in the Bible. The primary canonical source for information about Mary is the New Testament, yet the basic...
View of a gallery space with blue walls. On the left is a painting of a woman in a dark blue dress in a golden frame. Next to it is a red cloth framed in glass.

The Female Form through Female Eyes
Posted: March 12, 2015
Category: Picturing Mary
Nearly 300 years apart, Italian artist Artemisia Gentileschi (1593–1656) and French artist Suzanne Valadon (1865–1938) both used their perspectives as women to capture the power and complexity of the female...
Against a dark black and brown background, a light skinned woman in a red dress with wavy reddish-brown hair wears a white cloth and gold crown around her head. Her right hand clutches a palm while her left grazes a spiked breaking wheel. She stares straight at the viewer.

Blood and Milk, Science and Culture: The Virgin as a Nursing Mother
Posted: February 4, 2015
Category: Picturing Mary
The figure of the Virgin Mary has been used in art as an ideal woman, poetic beauty, and perfect mother. An example within Picturing Mary: Woman, Mother, Idea of the Virgin...
View of a gallery space with blue walls. On the left is a painting of a woman in a dark blue dress in a golden frame. Next to it is a red cloth framed in glass.

Go Global with Mary
Posted: January 20, 2015
Category: Picturing Mary
Did you know that NMWA launched its first-ever online exhibition, A Global Icon: Mary in Context, in conjunction with Picturing Mary: Woman, Mother, Idea?
View of a gallery space with blue walls. On the left is a painting of a woman in a dark blue dress in a golden frame. Next to it is a red cloth framed in glass.

Orsola Maddalena Caccia: “Picturing Mary” as a Renaissance Nun
Posted: December 30, 2014
Category: Picturing Mary
Picturing Mary: Woman, Mother, Idea focuses on themes of femininity, motherhood, and ideal women expressed through the image of the Virgin Mary. The lives of women artists whose work is...
View of a gallery space with blue walls. On the left is a painting of a woman in a dark blue dress in a golden frame. Next to it is a red cloth framed in glass.

Beyond Iconography: Food in The Birth of St. John the Baptist
Posted: December 19, 2014
Category: Picturing Mary
Orsola Maddalena Caccia’s lavishly detailed painting The Birth of St. John the Baptist (1635), currently on view in Picturing Mary: Woman, Mother, Idea, features still-life arrangements nestled into the sacred...
View of a gallery space with blue walls. On the left is a painting of a woman in a dark blue dress in a golden frame. Next to it is a red cloth framed in glass.

Picturing (and Printing and Publishing) Mary
Posted: December 12, 2014
Category: Picturing Mary
The catalogue for Picturing Mary: Woman, Mother, Idea explores depictions of the Virgin Mary in art from a unique combination of religious, cross-cultural, and contemporary art-historical perspectives.
View of a gallery space with blue walls. On the left is a painting of a woman in a dark blue dress in a golden frame. Next to it is a red cloth framed in glass.

There’s something about Mary . . .
Posted: December 4, 2014
Category: Picturing Mary
Tomorrow, December 5, the National Museum of Women in the Arts opens Picturing Mary: Woman, Mother, Idea. This new exhibition explores the concept of womanhood represented by the Virgin Mary,...
View of a gallery space with blue walls. On the left is a painting of a woman in a dark blue dress in a golden frame. Next to it is a red cloth framed in glass.