MARYS for May #19 – Image and Likeness

St. Luke Drawing the Virgin

Rogier van der Weyden, oil on oak panel, c. 1435-40, 

Boston Museum of Fine Arts

The Boston Museum of Fine Arts describes this painting as "among the most important northern European paintings in the United States,” but I did not know the painting until I spent time in the MFA this weekend. Van der Weyden is one of the masters of the northern Renaissance and among the first artists to employ the use of oil paints. In this panel painting which was commissioned by the guild of artists in Brussels, van der Weyden offers us insights into both Mary and the artist.

According to tradition, St. Luke was the first person to paint an image of Mary. In some versions of the story, Luke uses the table top in St. John’s kitchen at Patmos as the surface for this original icon. Art and evangelization are thus linked from the beginning of Christianity. Van der Weyden re-imagines this tradition in a provocative way. In a composition that reminds us of countless scenes of the Annunciation, he places St. Luke in the position usually held by the angel. The artist becomes the messenger of the good news. Further, St. Luke is a self-portrait of van der Weyden. The ideal of the patron saint is that his followers assume the virtues of their patron, and van der Weyden shows his desire to enter into the familiar relationship with Mary and Jesus enjoyed by Luke. As he contemplates the intimate scene of nursing mother and contented child, he strives to capture more than just physical details. Seated beneath a royal canopy of costly damask, the humble mother and her incarnate son sit not on the throne but on its footstep. Beyond the room where Luke/Rogier sketches, we see an enclosed garden (hortus conclusus) that is a symbol of Mary’s virginity. Two figures at the back wall of the garden look out into the distance. Van der Weyden uses the background of his painting both to draw us into this intimate moment of union and to lead us out to the world, the goal of both contemplation and evangelization.

An icon invites the viewer to a prayerful encounter with the holy persons depicted. In this painting we see that the God who made us in his image and likeness has now taken on our likeness in the incarnation, the Word made flesh through Mary. In “imagining” ourselves as part of this we are formed ever more closely into the likeness of the one we contemplate. As we strive to “draw” closer to Jesus and Mary, we must use our talents to “announce” this wonderful news to the world beyond our enclosed space of prayerful encounter.

St. Luke, artist and evangelist, pray for us, that we may be made ever more fully into the image of the Word made flesh through Mary.