medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
> Holland Lee Hendrix:
> "And then one of the most important representations of Isis is what we
> call the Isis lactans, that is Isis suckling, nurturing her offspring
> at her breast. This is a kind of iconography that appears to have been
> terribly determinative in the early iconography of Mary and Jesus."
John,
This would hardly be unique. There was no Christian art until the 3rd century, and
when it began to appear, it was heavily informed by image types that were already
known to the early artists responsible for Christian subject matter. Thus, for
example, the sleeping Endymion became Jonah resting under his gourd plant.
Etc.,etc. Taking over an image type, however, hardly presupposes that the
theological "definition" of Mary owed anything to Isis, or -- perhaps more obviously -
- that Christian understandings of Jonah owed anything to the legend of Endymion
and Selena.
Cheers,
Jim Bugslag
PS. It has also been claimed that "Black Virgins" were copying the blackness of
images of Isis or of Artemis of Ephesus -- which may contain a germ of truth, since
Black Virgins did not begin to appear until the highly humanistic 16th century, or so.
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