Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Luke 1:48 Wall Art

The Madonna in this watercolor

Mary is shown from the waist up, wrapped in a deep blue mantle edged with gold over a red gown. Her head tilts down toward her son, eyes half closed. The Child, curly-haired and barefoot, sits in the crook of her arm in a cream tunic with a red cloth across his lap, and he looks out at the viewer rather than at her. One small hand rests on her collar.

Behind them hang two gilded halos, hers larger and stamped with fleurs-de-lis, his smaller and marked with a cross. A gold star of the sort Byzantine painters placed on Mary's veil sits on her forehead, and a second one on her shoulder. Above, in brown script: “all generations shall call me blessed”, with Luke 1:48 in smaller letters. The rest of the sheet is left warm and empty.

What does Luke 1:48 mean?

The words come from the Magnificat, the hymn Mary speaks when she visits her cousin Elizabeth in the hill country of Judea. The whole verse reads: “For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden: for, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.” The two halves belong together. Mary does not claim greatness for herself; she says God looked at someone of no standing, and that this act of attention is what future people will remember.

It is a remarkable thing for a young woman from Nazareth to say, and it came true in a very literal way. Twenty centuries later her name is spoken in the Hail Mary, in Orthodox hymns and in Protestant Christmas carols, which is exactly the chain of generations the verse imagines.

The title Our Lady of Perpetual Help belongs to a Cretan icon brought to Rome around 1499 and entrusted to the Redemptorists in 1866. Our watercolor is not a copy of that panel (there are no angels holding the instruments of the Passion, and the Child's sandal is not slipping off his foot), but it keeps the icon's language: gilded halos, the star of the veil, the Child held close for comfort.

For a baptism, or for her

Families devoted to Our Lady of Perpetual Help often want her image in the room where a child sleeps, and this print is a natural choice for a baptism or christening, from a godmother or grandmother. The tender pose suits a nursery without looking childish.

It also speaks to women at any age: a mother, a sponsor at Confirmation, a friend named Mary. In a Catholic home it can hang beside a crucifix or above a small prayer shelf, where the blue and gold catch candlelight well.