World View Museum Project #2

Vania N.

WHAP

Ann Richards School FYWL

The chosen piece of art is important and represents the time period because religion began to flourish among the population. Christianity was a religion that at the time began to expand into many regions, like many other religions. It’s an important piece in the museum because without the impacts that religion played in Europe, the civilizations wouldn’t have developed the way that they did, which if they didn’t, present day Europe wouldn’t be the same and that would mean that other regions of the world that were influenced by Europe wouldn’t be the same as well. So, the piece is relevant in modern day because the religion (Christianity) is still flourishing and without the religion, history would be completely since it has had major impacts on civilizations.

OVERVIEW

The Virgin Crowned by Angels, c. 1450 is by Stefan Lochner who was a German painter. Lochner is well known for his religious paintings and the work he did for many churches like St. Laurenz in Cologne, Germany. For the painting above, Lochner decided to use oil paints and a wooden canvas. As he expanded the pieces he produced, he became one of Cologne’s best artists. The painting shows Mary being crowned as Queen of Heaven while she is holding Christ Child.

PARTS

In the painting we see Mary the Virgin holding Christ Child who is holding a gold crucifix. Mary is wearing a red robe that reaches the floor. At Mary’s feet are red and white roses that according to Lochner, represent her purity. Behind Mary are green palmettes that are decorated on the velvet by gold thread; behind the velvet is the night where some stars are present. On both the left and right upper corners, there are faint outlines of wings belonging to angels and they are the one’s crowning Mary Queen of Heaven; more to the center, there is a large crown floating above Mary’s head, which wears a pearl headband. Christ Child was painted unclothed which makes me wonder why the author chose to do that. Something that really stands out is the pearl headband that Mary is wearing because it must be that she already holds a title and with the crown, she will hold a higher title (Queen of Heaven)

TITLE

The painting is named The Virgin Crowned by Angels, and it represents the painting entirely. The title gives away that there is a virgin and she is being crowned as some sort of queen. An important piece of information also given in the title is that she is being crowned by angels, so we can assume that the painting might be a religious painting. Even though the title doesn’t go into depth about the virgin, because she’s being crowned as queen by angels we can also infer that her title is a high title.

INTERPRETATION

When thinking about the title and being able to look at the painting, we can infer that religion was present in the painter’s life is this is what he chose to paint. It symbolizes that the virgin is a superior, which is why she has been chosen to be Queen. So, because this wasn’t the only religious piece of work that Lochner produced and there are many more similar paintings by other artists, Christianity or similar religions must have been part of most of the populations daily life.

CONTEXT

Around the time that the painting was produced, Johannes Gutenberg began printing the bible, a little before that he had actually introduced the printing press. So, the bible being printed in large quantities to be distributed among the population had an impact of having religion being incarnated more in their life.

CONCLUSION

The visual as a whole shows that during the specific time period, religion played a major role in everyone’s life. Not only that, but because Mary is a woman and is being crowned, maybe women and men had egalism or were close to having egalism. It’s important to what we are studying because religion influenced many aspects of civilizations, it socially,culturally and politically involved because of the effects that religion had.