(REVIEW) In 1492, Italian artist Carlo Crivelli painted an idealized portrait of the Immaculate Conception for the church of San Francis in Pergola, a small town in central Italy. Observed every Dec. 8, the feast day commemorates the conception of the Virgin Mary, born free from original sin.
Like most religious paintings of the era, Crivelli’s portrait of Mary is rife with symbolism. Her loose, flowing hair indicates her maidenly virginity, while ripe pears and apples dangling at her side suggest her ultimate fruitfulness as the mother of Jesus.
Floating above her head, a pair of angels unfurl a banner bearing a Latin inscription, drawn from Biblical sources, which translates, “As from the beginning I was conceived in the mind of God, so have I in like manner been conceived in the flesh.”
At her slippered feet, more writing appears along the hem of her luxurious garment. Composed of highly stylized, vaguely Arabic, rune-like squiggles, the jumbled lettering, known to art historians as pseudoscript, is technically indecipherable. However, scholars have more recently been able to decipher key Arabic words, borrowed from the Muslim world.
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