Cretan Venetian School. Black Madonna with the Child.

Cretan Venetian School. Black Madonna with the Child.Late seventeenth early eighteenth centuryOil painting on canvas 660x 520 mm. with frame 780x630 mm. Good condition, frame with some wear, minor defects.

Provenance: Property from an Italian private collector.
Condition Report: Gorgeous Black Madonna with the Child in her arms holding a book. The cult of the Black Madonna, depicting the mother earth, is very much represented in paintings scattered throughout Europe. The spread in the West of images of black Madonnas is very ancient and is often associated with links with the East.In Venice there are two Black Madonnas: One is the Madonna Nicopeia, (which means bearer of victory and which is represented sitting with the child in her arms) of 1600, preserved in the Basilica of S. Marco from 1618, which is a Constantinopoleian icon; the other, of the same age, kept at the Basilica of the Madonna della Salute. These icons, however, represent a connection between the paleochristian age and Christianity, in giving a particular value to Mary, virgin and mother, but also representative of the generosity of nature, of fruitfulness, of the growth that the earth generates for the creatures that populate it : mother earth, virgin and mother, called in different ways, and which represents the very essence of life.The diffusion and the cult of the Black Madonnas in the west seem to have been particularly intense at the time of the crusades, both because different crusaders brought home oriental icons, and for the action of some religious orders (first of all Carmelites and Franciscans, also very active in the Holy Land and Syria) or chivalrous (especially that of the Templars, who had their own churches in the main European cities). The Templars and other orders of chivalry were linked to the figure of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, who preached the second crusade. Saint Bernard wrote a commentary on the Song of Songs, in which the bride nigra sed formosa, the main character of the book, is considered one of the female figures of the Old Testament who can be interpreted as prophecies of the Virgin.For inquiries, detailed condition report and additional images please mail to info@badoemart.it.