Padua

the Madonna Mora (Dark or Black Madonna)
and the Black Madonna of Donatello

photo: www.Padovasorprende.it

Photo: Web Gallery of Art

In the Basilica di Sant’ Antonio, also known as Il Santo, Piazza del Santo, 11, 35123 Padua, left: Madonna Mora, 1396 C.E. sandstone sculpture by Rainaldino de Puydarrieux, right: Black Madonna, 1445/50 C.E.  bronze sculpture by Donatello, 160 cm.

St. Anthony’s Black Madonnas:

Both Dark Madonnas in this church have a strong connection to the great saint and ‘doctor of the Church’ St. Anthony of Padua (1195-1231). He was born in Lisbon, Portugal, spent some time teaching in the South of France, but mostly lived in Italy as a close, spiritual companion of St. Francis of Assisi. He died in Padua and, in accordance with his wishes, was first buried in the chapel of the Black Madonna, which was in the small church Santa Maria Mater Domini (St. Mary Mother of the Lord), near a convent he had founded. The church was donated to St. Anthony in 1229 by the bishop of Padua. Here the Saint celebrated Mass, preached, heard confessions, gathered in prayer.[1] His sanctity was so famous that after his passing in 1231, people immediately began flocking to his tomb and he was officially declared a saint at record speed, the following year. It was obvious right away that the church Santa Maria Mater Domini wasn’t going to be able to accommodate the flood of pilgrims and so a big basilica was built on the same site, into which only the chapel of the Dark Madonna was incorporated. In 1263, his tomb was moved into another chapel in the new basilica.
 St. Anthony expressed his great devotion to Mother Mary in many ways, including by teaching that she, just like Jesus, was conceived without sin and ascended into Heaven. Centuries later these ideas were given the status of official dogma, i.e. something one must believe in order to be in full communion with the Catholic Church.

Ean Begg says that St. Anthony may have brought a Black Madonna to Padua from France. That statue may have been brought back to France by St. Bonaventure (1221 – 1274), who “developed the cult of St Anthony in the Basilica del Santo (and) is credited with taking a (standing) Black Virgin to Aix-en-Provence in 1274.”[2]

 Will the real Black Madonna please stand up?!

The dark mothers in the Basilica Il Santo were commissioned around the same time, perhaps to make up for the loss of St. Anthony’s Black Madonna when St. Bonaventure took her back to France, where she may have come from. Apparently, the Black Madonna was so important to the memory of St. Anthony that one replacement statue was set in the Chapel of the Black Madonna and one behind the high altar. Both could rightly claim the title Madonna Mora.

 The Madonna Mora in the chapel by that name:

In 1985, Ean Begg describes her skin color as “soft beige-brown”,[3] but at one point she was actually black as coal! Andrea Missagia describes the history of renovations in footnotes 5 and 6 to his article:  La Cappella della Madonna Mora nella Basilica di Sant’Antonio di Padova. He acknowledges that a Black Madonna is mentioned early on in the history of the basilica, “for example in 1651”[4] and that the 19th century restorers believed the original color to be black. He makes clear that the current thinking of renovators at the shrine is that the Madonna’s skin must have darkened over time due to candle soot and dust, just like the frescoes behind her did.[5] Apparently, they found some color pigments under a 19th century layer of carbon black to prove their point.

However, it would make sense for her to be created intentionally black (just like her sister by Donatello, more on that below) since she was commissioned to replace a former Black Madonna in whose presence St. Anthony used to pray and wanted to be buried.

It is conceivable that something similar to Einsiedeln, Switzerland happened, where the Black Madonna needed restoration after being hidden in the ground during the French Revolution. She was whitened, there was an uproar in the population, the restorer offered a compromise of dark skin with some color in the eyes, on the cheeks and lips, but the faithful didn’t relent until he painted her whole face pitch black like they remembered her. So maybe someone added some color to the originally Black Madonna, which then was covered with black in order to return her to her original color? Or maybe her skin was dark and her clothes colored?

The sign at the Chapel of the whitened Black Madonna
photo: Anasuya Isaacs

Why would the renovators in Padua go against centuries of tradition closely linked to their great saint? Why did they whiten a statue in front of whom a big sign proclaims in 6 languages: “the chapel of Black Madonna”? Because they find white skin so much more beautiful than black skin that they are willing to betray their own saint and tradition?! In footnote 6 Missagia quotes an article that delights: “The Madonna Mora shines again – the morning of Padua.”

I’d rather she shone like the night sky, in sync with her title and tradition. After all, as the article acknowledges, this statue is “known to the faithful as the Black Madonna”.

The Madonna Mora is standing, as is typical for Gothic Madonnas. I think that could be taken as her response to the appeal: “Will the real Black Madonna please stand up!”

The Black Madonna of Donatello:

Behind the high (i.e. main) altar of the basilica, we find the Black Madonna of Donatello (1386-1466), the famous sculptor who influenced Michelangelo and other great Renaissance masters. This very unusual masterpiece was created for its current location. The Dark Mother is enthroned between Saints Anthony and Francis as if to point to the special connection her predecessor (St. Anthony’s Black Madonna) had to the two saints.

Her current incarnation is just standing up, one foot back one foot forward, half raised up already, as if she was coming towards and for us! Maybe she too is answering the appeal: “Will the real Black Madonna please rise!”

Some people may argue that she wasn’t necessarily meant to be a Black Madonna but is just dark because of the natural color of bronze. To refute this notion, James H. Beck in his article Donatello’s Black Madonna on the University of Heidelberg archives website cites a receipt for work done in 1477 C.E.: the skin of the saints (but not of the Madonna and child) was covered in silver, apparently to accentuate the difference between White saints and Black Madonna.[6] That silver is no longer there. Perhaps the same people stole it who mutilated the left eye and right hand of Baby Jesus.

The Web Gallery of Art gives this short description of Donatello’s statue: “The Madonna is represented as an arcane priestess rising from between the faces of two smiling sphinxes at the base of her throne. It is probable that for this unusual representation of the Virgin, so oriental in feeling, neither seated nor standing but caught in the moment of rising, Donatello was inspired by some Byzantine icon or even a piece of Etruscan (pre-Christian Italian) statuary.“ The sanctuary’s own website has only one sentence to say about this masterpiece and acknowledges neither her Blackness nor her illustrious maker. It seems, they don’t know how to deal with how different she is; so they don’t deal with her at all.

Thankfully, some real scholars researched her in detail. Here are some of their findings:

 The above quoted James H. Beck writes: “Horst W. Janson’s explanation of the statue, together with his analysis, is the most fruitful yet entertained. He with good reason suggested that Donatello must have been requested to conform his Madonna and Child with an older Madonna image owned by the Church.[7]

 Nothing remained of the old church of Santa Maria Mater Domini which had given way to the building of the new church except for a single chapel, that of the Madonna Mora. Clearly this chapel must have been considered especially sacred, having close connections to the patron saint of the new church. The ground plan of II Santo reveals that the church had been constructed with the intention of maintaining the importance of the Chapel of the Madonna Mora, which is on axis with the Crossing. Even if the walls of the Chapel of the Madonna Mora had been considerably altered when it was incorporated into the new building, the sacred or venerated character of the area had been preserved. The Chapel of the Madonna Mora obtained its name according to the opinion of Gonzati because: “brown or black is the color in which the face of the Virgin who is venerated here, was painted.”[8] James H. Beck continues: “… there must have been a particularly sacred older Madonna image in Il Santo before the rebuilding of the altar …the conclusion is inevitable: Donatello’s bronze Madonna embodies and reflects an image of the Black Madonna that pre-existed it, one which was located in the Chapel of the Madonna Mora. One further assumption may be made considering the evidence: the ancient image of the Black Madonna that was in the demolished church of Santa Maria Mater Domini must have been intimately connected with Saint Anthony himself. Perhaps he had brought it with him to Padua from the South of France, where he spent several years in the 1220s. Donatello’s Madonna and Child was a conscious, planned allusion to the pre-existing Black Madonna.”[9]

 Could it be that there were two Black Madonnas in St. Anthony’s church?! Why not? Countless churches have more than one Madonna statue.

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Footnotes:
[1] https://www.santantonio.org/it/content/cappella-della-madonna-mora

[2] Ean Begg, The Cult of the Black Virgin, Arkana/Penguin Books, London: 1985 p. 246 + 167

[3] Ibid. p. 245

[4] There is mention of a "Black Madonna", for example, in a document dated 1651, see Antonio Sartori, Archivio Sartori. Franciscan history and art documents, edited by Giovanni Luisetto, 4 vols., 8 volumes, Padua 1983-1989, I (1983), Basilica and convent of the Saint, p. 665, note no. 6.

Quoted in Andrea Missagia, La Cappella della Madonna Mora nella Basilica di Sant’Antonio di Padova, footnote 5.

 [5] “On the origin of the appellative "Mora", one of the most accredited hypotheses considers how the Virgin may have been so called because of its brown color, due to the deposit of dust and smoke from the votive candles which were placed on the altar for centuries.” Google translation of ibid article. 

Another chapter of the same article lauds the lightening of the frescoes behind the whitened Black Madonna: (Google translation) “Thus returned to light, the frescoes immediately captured the attention of art historians (2), who now agree in attributing their paternity to one of the main protagonists of Italian fourteenth-century art, namely Giotto.”

(2) The proposal of attribution to Giotto was advanced in 2015 by Giacomo Guazzini, at the time a researcher at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz - Max Planck Institut, see G. Guazzini, "A new Giotto at the Saint of Padua: the chapel of the Madonna Mora ”, in New Studies , 21 (2015), pp. 5-40”

[6] “For a possible confirmation of the Black Madonna aspect of Donatello’s Virgin on the Padua Altar, Professor Middeldorf, with his usual acumen, has called my attention to a payment of 1477. From the document we learn that the hands and faces of the Saints on the altar were silvered. The Madonna and Child group is not mentioned specifically and apparently they were not touched, leaving the black appearance of the bronze.” James H. Beck, Donatello’s Black Madonna, on University of Heidelberg archives website, footnote 8, p. 459. The receipt is quoted in: Giuseppe Fiocco and Antonio Sartori, II trittico donatelliano del Santo, Padua, 1961, p. 74

[7] Horst W. Janson, The Sculpture of Donatello, II, Princeton, 1957, p. 184. Janson also points out that there are parts that have remained unfinished, especially on the back where The Fall is shown in relief. He also remarks that the Christ Child’s left eye and right hand are badly mutilated. James H. Beck, p.456

[8] “bruno, o moro, e il colore in cui fu dipinto il volto della Vergine che qui se venera.” Bernardo Gonzati, La Basilica di S. Antonio di Padova, I, Padua, 1852, p. 240

[9] James H. Beck, op cit. p. 459