Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Virgin and Child in Front of the Basilica Santa Maria Maggiore
Netherlandish (Flanders, Netherlands)
Not on view
Starting in the sixteenth century, the Jesuits globally disseminated prints such as this one after an eleventh- to thirteenth-century Byzantine-style Marian icon housed in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. When the prints arrived in Ethiopia around 1600, artists there quickly translated the prototype image into regional forms. They depicted the Virgin and Child as contemporary Ethiopians, with appropriate hairstyles, dress, and accessories and in local settings.
Due to rights restrictions, this image cannot be enlarged, viewed at full screen, or downloaded.
