Editing Madonna (art) (section)

===Early images===
[[File:Mary & Child Icon Sinai 6th century.jpg|thumb|[[Icon]] of the enthroned ''Virgin and Child'' with saints and angels, and the [[Hand of God (art)|Hand of God]] above, 6th century, [[Saint Catherine's Monastery]], perhaps the earliest iconic image of the subject to survive]]

There was a great expansion of the [[cult (religion)|cult of Mary]] after the [[First Council of Ephesus|Council of Ephesus]] in 431, when her status as [[Theotokos]] ("God-bearer") was confirmed; this had been a subject of some controversy until then, though mainly for reasons to do with [[Christology|arguments over the nature of Christ]].  In [[mosaic]]s in [[Santa Maria Maggiore]] in Rome, dating from 432 to 440, just after the council, she is not yet shown with a [[Halo (religious iconography)|halo]], and she is also not shown in Nativity scenes at this date, though she is included in the [[Adoration of the Magi]].

By the next century the iconic depiction of the Virgin enthroned carrying the infant Christ was established, as in the example from the only group of icons surviving from this period, at [[Saint Catherine's Monastery]] in [[Egypt]]. This type of depiction, with subtly changing differences of emphasis, has remained the mainstay of depictions of Mary to the present day. The image at Mount Sinai succeeds in combining two aspects of Mary described in the [[Magnificat]], her [[humility]] and her [[wikt:exaltation|exaltation]] above other humans, and has the [[Hand of God (art)|Hand of God]] above, up to which the archangels look. An early icon of the Virgin as queen is in the church of [[Santa Maria in Trastevere]] in Rome, datable to 705–707 by the kneeling figure of [[Pope John VII]], a notable promoter of the cult of the Virgin, to whom the infant Christ reaches his hand.  This type was long confined to Rome.  The roughly half-dozen varied icons of the Virgin and Child in Rome from the 6th–8th century form the majority of the representations surviving from this period; "isolated images of the Madonna and Child ... are so common ... to the present day in Catholic and Orthodox tradition, that it is difficult to recover a sense of the novelty of such images in the early Middle Ages, at least in western Europe".<ref>Nees, Lawrence. ''Early medieval art'', 143–145, quote 144, Oxford University Press, 2002, {{ISBN|0-19-284243-9}}, {{ISBN|978-0-19-284243-5}}</ref>

At this period the [[iconography]] of the Nativity was taking [[Nativity of Jesus in art#Byzantine image|the form, centred on Mary]], that it has retained up to the present day in [[Eastern Orthodoxy]], and on which Western depictions remained based until the [[High Middle Ages]].  Other narrative scenes for Byzantine cycles on the ''[[Life of the Virgin]]'' were being evolved, relying on [[New Testament apocrypha|apocypha]]l sources to fill in her life before the [[Annunciation to Mary]].  By this time the political and economic collapse of the [[Western Roman Empire]] meant that the Western, Latin, church was unable to compete in the development of such sophisticated [[iconography]], and relied heavily on Byzantine developments.

The earliest surviving image in a Western [[illuminated manuscript]] of the [[Madonna and Child]] comes from the [[Book of Kells]] of about 800 <ref>{{Cite journal|last=Werner|first=Martin|date=1972|title=The Madonna and Child Miniature in the Book of Kells: Part I|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3048928|journal=The Art Bulletin|volume=54|issue=1|pages=1–23|doi=10.2307/3048928|jstor=3048928}}</ref> (there is a similar carved image on the lid of [[St Cuthbert's coffin]] of 698) and, though magnificently decorated in the style of [[Insular art]], the drawing of the figures can only be described as rather crude compared to Byzantine work of the period.  This was in fact an unusual inclusion in a [[Gospel book]], and images of the Virgin were slow to appear in large numbers in manuscript art until the [[book of hours]] was devised in the 13th century.

The ''[[Madonna of humility]]'' by [[:File:Madonna-of-humility- 1433 Domenico di Bartolo.jpg|Domenico di Bartolo]], 1433, is considered one of the most innovative devotional images from the early [[Renaissance art|Renaissance]].<ref name="Trinchieri">''Art and music in the early modern period'' by Franca Trinchieri Camiz, Katherine A. McIver {{ISBN|0-7546-0689-9}} p. 15 [https://books.google.com/books?id=mdIFQTuA4cQC&pg=PA15]</ref>