Those perennial heroes of conspiracy theorists everywhere, the Knights Templar, have surfaced again. Now the Knights are claimed to be responsible for Renaissance paintings of the pregnant Madonna:
"A string of artists working from the middle of the 14th century near Florence painted the Virgin Mary as they imagined her to have been while she was pregnant. The best-known of these swelling Madonnas is by the great 15th century Tuscan artist Piero della Francesca. It shows an apparently dejected mother-to-be with one hand resting on the burgeoning front of her maternity gown.
[…]
"Carvings and sculptures of pregnant Marys have a longer history before and after the early Renaissance. But the painting of them by artists of stature is almost entirely confined to Tuscany in the 130 years ending around 1467, when Piero della Francesco is reckoned to have created the fresco at Monterchi.
"In a 40-page booklet published last month, Renzo Manetti, a Florentine architect and author of several works on symbolism in art, argues that this is no coincidence.
"’Florence was a major Templar centre and these Madonnas start to appear soon after the suppression of the knights in 1312,’ he told the Guardian this week. The first by a celebrated artist is attributed to Taddeo Gaddi and dated to between 1334 and 1338.
"In virgin and child paintings, the child symbolises wisdom, knowledge, truth. So what the pregnant Madonnas represent is a temporarily hidden truth,’ Mr. Manetti said."
When Mr. Manetti has time for a sabbatical from architecture, I suggest a course in Logic 101. The attribution of one thing to its immediate predecessor simply because it happened afterward is known as the logical fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc (Latin, "after this, therefore because of this"). The article reports that an Italian priest has offered a far simpler explanation of the paintings of the pregnant Madonnas:
"In a 15-page article due to appear soon in the diocesan periodical, Father Giovanni Alpigiano argues for the traditional view that the expectant virgins represent the theological concept of incarnation. There is ‘no arcane secret’ attached to Gaddi’s Mary, he insists, despite her cryptic, knowing expression.
"’Great care needs to be taken in attempting to rewrite the history of art or literature solely with the help of esoteric clues,’ Fr. Alpigiano adds. An account of his counter-blast was splashed over the best part of a page in Avvenire, the national daily newspaper owned by the Italian bishops’ conference."
But, of course, simple explanations do not sell books or establish academic reputations so Fr. Alpigiano must be satisfied with being a Catholic apologist rather than an art "expert."
“In virgin and child paintings, the child symbolises wisdom, knowledge, truth. So what the pregnant Madonnas represent is a temporarily hidden truth,’ Mr. Manetti said.”
Or maybe she’s just pregnant.
“I can get pregnant, but men like you can’t, Renzo.”
Seriously, though, it’s a sad world when just being the Seat of Wisdom, Gate of Heaven, and part of God’s Super Secret Plan of Salvation isn’t enough to explain a girl’s smile.
One can attribute this to the continuing nuttiness brought to us by those modern throwbacks who continue to insist that they are actual Templars, despite the fact that the Templars have not existed for centuries. Their books remind me of D&D players who have grown old but absolutely refuse to grow up.
Incidentally, I saw a neat special on the History channel called “Beyond the DaVinci Code” that did a pretty decent job of debunking the whole mess. I may purchase the thing on DVD so that I can loan it out to gullible friends in need of correction.
Whaaa?! Something good actually came from the History Channel? Something that does not supplant 2000 years of wisdom with some East-Coast aging hippie’s idea of scholarship??
Armageddon is nigh.
Everything anyone needs to know about images of the pregnant Virgin may be found in MARIA GRAVIDA by Gregor Martin Lechner (Munich. 1981). The motif goes back to the 12th C. Besides examples from many Western countries, it is also found in Orthodox icons.
Florence was not a special center for the Templars. Their greatest stength was in France. When will this nonsense end?
Truth is finally coming out. For hundreds of years information and knowledge of the Black Madonna has been suppressed by the Church. A well researched novel with a bibliography is Secrets of the Magdalene Scrolls. In Cucugnan, France in the small church, there is a statue of
a pregnant Virgin Mary – or it could be Mary
Magdalene. An open mind opens doors to new realizations and adventures.
I’m trying to find a painting/print of other visual piece depicting Mary with child on the journey to Jerusalem. All I can find is a slender Mary but I would like to use a VERY pregnant Mary riding into Jerusalem.