The whole of Italy celebrates the height of summer holidays on August 15, the day known as Ferragosto. Although many younger-generation Italians have forgotten the origins of this once-religious feast, it traditionally honored the Virgin Mary’s assumption into heaven. Mary’s divine immortality and the art representing it has been on my mind since Timothy Verdon’s interesting exhibition “Picturing Mary: Woman, Mother, Idea” at Washington’s National Museum of Women in the Arts in 2015. Tuscany abounds with Madonna imagery and her paintings represent one of the most unique aspects of Catholicism: no other modern religion so widely promotes the divinity of a female figure.
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