Madonna

Rome
3rd/4th century
Marble
Height 62 cm, width 43 cm, depth 20 cm

This is one of the earliest depictions of the Madonna from the late Roman Empire. Celtic portraits of the mother goddess, an expression of fertility, as well as Egyptian depictions of mother and child, such as Isis and Osiris, show the mother sitting with her child on her lap. These characteristics can also be seen in sculptures of Cybele, a mother goddess who was particularly well-known and revered in Anatolia. In the 5th century BC, such depictions also reached Athens.
Cybele was later adopted as a deity in the Roman Empire and became known as Magna Mater. The oracle of the Sibyl in 205 BC, which recommended the summoning of the Magna Mater as an important ally in Rome’s second war against Carthage, created a new form of cultic worship for her. As a newly conceived Trojan goddess, she became the ancestral mother of the Roman Empire. As a result of Roman hegemony, the cult of the Magna Mater spread throughout the Roman Empire. A statuette of Cybele from the 2nd century AD from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (AC1992.152.37) can serve as a comparative example of the figure’s posture and sculptural execution. However, the libation bowl and the lions were exchanged with Christian attributes.
The earliest Christian depictions of this type, of Mary and the infant Jesus, can be found on sarcophagi from the 3rd century AD. This example is already a monumental sculpture. A female figure is depicted seated; she is wearing a robe girded under her chest and a cloak that is wrapped around her shoulders and draped over her lap. The cloak is barely hewn, but the undergarment is shown in straight, doughy folds. It falls in thick beads over the figure’s shoes. The woman is holding an open book lying on her lap with her left hand, drawing the viewer’s attention to this attribute. This is possibly the Holy Scriptures. With her right hand, she presses the naked child against her, who is balanced on her right knee and facing the viewer head-on. The mother’s intimate gesture further emphasizes the intimacy between mother and child.