Madonna della Misericordia

A Venetian Icon

I stumbled upon the Madonna della Misericordia in Carmel on a sunny December morning in 2003. The Mother of Mercy was sitting on a coffee table at Brinton's. As I left the store with a couple of Christmas ornaments in my hands, I was compelled to come back and take her home. I didn't know her name, I wasn't even sure she was the Madonna, but I was drawn to her beauty and the aura of tranquil protection it radiates; according to the saleswoman it was, perhaps, the Virgin of the Streets, as the people gathered under the folds of her cloak may suggest. A sticker placed at the bottom of the base revealed her true name: Mother of Mercy.

I then realized that I had seen and photographed similar images all over Venice but hadn't noticed her. My next trip to Venice in September 2004 was in search of the Madonna della Misericordia. A pursuit that continues until now.

I know of 21 Madonna della Misericordia scattered all over Venice; a few are in churches and museums, tucked away from general view, but most are not; like us, they inhabit the very streets of Venice offering protection to the passerby as they have been doing for centuries; all we have to do is lift our eyes.

Curiously, the locations on the map seem to delineate the contour of Mary's cloak, with her head at the Scuola Vecchia della Misericordia, where she once reigned over the main portal and where only a scar remains. The relief was taken to London and placed at the Victoria and Albert Museum, where it can be admired today.

I should correct myself. I didn't take her home. She took me home.

Salve Regina

Marchetto Cara (1450(?)-1525)

Salve, Regina, mater misericordiae:
Vita, dulcedo et spes nostra, salve.
Ad te clamamus, exsules, filii Evae
Ad te suspiramus gementes et flentes
In hac lacrimarum valle.
Eja ergo, advocata nostra,
Illos tuos misericordes oculos
Ad nos conerte. Et Jesum, benedictum fructum ventris tui
Nobis post hoc exsilium ostende.
O Clemens: O pia:
O dulcis Virgo Mario.

A Little History...

Nobody knows for certain the origins of the iconography of the Madonna della Misericordia. The image appeared almost simultaneously in Central Italy, Cyprus and Armenian Cilicia in the second half of the XIII century. It is likely that it evolved from the Byzantine Icon of Virgin Orans or Platytera (meaning: "More Spacious than the Heavens"), which depicts the Virgin wrapped in a densely pleated mantle, her arms outstretched towards Heaven. Christ rests in a circle on her chest. The Platytera can be admired in Campo San Luca.

Some of the earliest works of the Madonna della Misericordia are "Madonna of the Franciscans" by Ducio (ca. 1280); the Marshal Oshin Gospels (1274) and an icon of the enthroned Virgin and Child in the Byzantine Museum in Nicosia (late XIII century).

The mendicant orders of the Franciscans and Carmelites with their many ties in Asia Minor, played an important role in disseminating the image. Duccio's Madonna can be admired in Siena, Pinacoteca Nazionale. The Marshal Oshin Gospels are in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York.

Locations in Venice

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