1. Early Stages
The date
of the earliest arriatio representations of the Virgin.
has been a subject of controversy between Roman
Catholic and Protestant
writers. The latter usually
ascribe to the period of the Theotokos
controversy, the fifth century, those
which may properly be called Ma
donna-pictures, while the former date
them earlier than the Nestorian heresy, some even
tracing their origin to
the sub-apostolic
age. The
true solution of this difference of opinion is probably
found in the view that the pre-Nestorian period
produced a number of pictures in which Mary
appeared as part of a group, but. that the origin of
separate pictures of, her intended to be used as
objects of religious veneration can not be placed se
early. In the oldest Christian works of art, Mary
appears invariably as a member of the composition
-connected, that is, with scenes from the life of
Jesus, especially the Annunciation, the Adoration
of the Magi, or the Presentation in the Temple: The
oldest representations of the
Annunciation,;including the famous one from the catacomb of Priscilla
(certainly before the time of Constantine), keep
close to scriptural lines; and the same is true of the
numerous representations of the Adoration of the
Magi, such as those in the catacomb of
Domitilla and in SS. Pietro a Marcellino. Not even where Mary
appears simply with her Child or in the Holy Family
are there any traces in these early days of her elevation to a supernatural dignity; and the influence of
Apocryphal legends enters comparatively late into
art. The commemoration of Mary by architectural
monuments dedicated to her cannot be clearly shown
before the fifth century, especially the time of the
triumph of the Theotokos-doctrine at Ephesus in
431. The church in which the council met received
at that time its dedication to "the Holy Mother
of God." The first church with this dedication at
Rome, Santa Maria Maggiore, was built soon after
432 by Sixtus III. on the site of a basilica erected a
century earlier by Liberius and dedicated for the
first time to the Virgin by Sixtus. It is at least half
a century earlier than Santa Maria in Trastevere, of
which the first written record dates from 499. Not
till the eighth or ninth century does the legend of the
Assumption begin to influence the imagination of
artists. About the same time were made some extant representations of the figure of Mary enthroned
in heaven holding her Child, such as the mosaics
put up about 816 by Paschal I. in the churches of
St. Cecilia and Santa Maria dells, Navicella. But
the attribution of actually regal attributes to her
does not yet occur in this period of transition to the
Middle Ages.
