The Madonna in Art — Reading Companion

Composition as a Clue to Mood

Hurll repeatedly ties compositional arrangement to the emotional tenor of a painting. In the chapter on the Madonna of Love, she notes that the enthroned and glorified types are “the least suitable for the display of maternal affection,” while portrait and landscape settings “are readily conceived as the Mater Amabilis.” Yet she immediately complicates her own rule: Fra Angelico’s Madonna della Stella, a glorified Madonna, shows the mother holding the child to her cheek, and Quentin Massys’s enthroned Madonna includes a kiss. The classification is a starting point, not a cage. Hurll’s prose shifts pace accordingly—quick, categorical statements in the opening of a section, then slower, more detailed descriptions as she tests her categories against specific works.

The Shift from Formal to Familiar

As the book moves from earlier chapters to the later ones on home environment and love, the language becomes markedly less formal. In the chapter on the Madonna in a Home Environment, Hurll describes Rembrandt’s Munich picture: “the laborer has stopped for a moment to peep at the babe, who has gone off to dreamland at his mother’s breast and now sleeps sweetly in her lap.” The sentence is longer, more rhythmically varied, and almost novelistic. Compare this to the clipped, taxonomic phrasing in the introduction, where she lists the chapter headings. The change in pace mirrors the subject matter: the domestic scenes invite a slower, more absorbed gaze, and Hurll’s writing adapts to that tempo.

Recurring Motifs and Their Variations

Several motifs recur across the excerpts, each time with a slightly different inflection. The motif of the child reaching or springing toward the mother appears in Raphael’s Madonna dell'Impannata (“springs to his mother’s arms”) and in the description of the Mater Amabilis (“she clasps him in her arms, holding him to her breast”). The motif of the cat or bird appears in Barocci’s Madonna del Gatto and Murillo’s Holy Family of the Bird, which Hurll calls “a similar motif, certainly not a pleasant one.” These repeated elements create a kind of internal cross-reference, allowing the reader to compare how different artists handle the same basic gesture or prop. Hurll’s voice remains steady—she does not rank the versions, but her word choice (“certainly not a pleasant one”) hints at a personal preference without breaking the analytical tone.

Because the excerpts cover only the preface, the table of contents, and parts of two chapters, the full arc of Hurll’s argument—especially how she handles the later categories like the Madonna as Witness—remains unclear. Readers should note that her classifications are not rigid; she often points out exceptions within a category. Pay attention to the way she shifts between general claims and specific examples, and to the moments when her own voice becomes more vivid, as in the Rembrandt passage. These are clues to the book’s deeper interest: not just cataloging Madonnas, but understanding how pictorial form shapes emotional response.

The rain kept tap-tapping on the window while I turned through The Madonna in Art, pausing longest on Rembrandt's quiet mother, her tenderness all in the tilt of her hand. Later, half-asleep, I picked up Stories Pictures Tell. Book 7 — A Closer Reading and found that same unhurried attention to gesture, as if one painter's devotion had simply led me to another's.