The Virgin and Child in the absidal mosaics
Mother Virgin with the Child standing
“Mother Virgin with the Child, apse, mosaic, Dormition Church, Nicaea, late 8th century”Compositions not in the apse style referring to this type of composition:
A Mother Virgin with the Child, enthroned among angels and martyrs, icon, Saint Catherine, Sinai, 5th-6th centuries.
A Mother Virgin with the Child, enthroned between two angels, S. Maria in Trastevere, 6th-7th century.
Observations
The oldest iconographic typology of the Virgin Mother with the Child, depicted alone, derives from the scene of the *Adoration of the Magi*, transformed from a side scene to a frontal and symmetrical one. The detachment of the side characters, the magi who become two or four for reasons of symmetry, or their replacement by others (angels, saints, donors, and patrons), is accomplished directly.This is the most frequent type. This preference is linked to the symbolic message conveyed by the very structure, that is, the arrangement of the two main characters, one in relation to the other and both in relation to the surrounding space. Besides the symbolic expression means used since Late Antiquity to represent the divine (frontality, immobility, impassibility, solemnity, uniform background, often golden), what characterizes this iconographic type is the strengthened figure of the Child compared to that of the Mother and the vertical trend of the entire composition, strongly centered. The Child does not appear naturally sitting on his Mother’s lap, but as if he were standing, while Mary draws the vertical that forms the compositional and chromatic background of the Incarnate Word.Also here, as already noted regarding the Marian iconography of the first period, the absence of an expression of mutual affection between Mother and Son is evident. Both look ahead. In the variant where the Virgin is standing, the reciprocal relationship between Son and Mother remains unchanged. It seems then evident that the presence of the throne is not essential. The core of the message of this module is given by the axis of the two figures, all oriented upwards with the imaginary verticality that goes from Redemption to the Assumption of the Virgin Mother. Or that path of descent-ascension that expresses the movement of Redemption: descent of the Incarnation, ascent of deification. The Mother does not perform any action, except the implicit one of presenting Jesus, the Son of God, to the world. The verticality of Mary’s figure makes her witness and herald of that living axis of mediation between earth and heaven that is the Incarnate Word.This is the great *symbolic space*, which is also the *mariological locus* of the Virgin Mary. The Mother does not perform any action, except the implicit one of presenting Jesus, the Son of God, to the world. It is the very verticality of her figure that makes her witness and herald of that living axis of mediation between earth and heaven that is the Incarnate Word.Graduate Studies in Mariology
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