Mary, the mother of Jesus, seems to hold a tough position in Mormon iconography. We honor her for her role in bearing and raising Jesus, and we celebrate her in art of the Nativity and closely related stories (the Annunciation, the Flight into Egypt, the boy Jesus at the temple). We’re also comfortable with images of Mary at the crucifixion. We even use the idea of Mary to celebrate Mormon motherhood, as in the gallery of images in the December 2007 Ensign, A Mother and an Overflowing Heart.

But with the exception of the  “Jesus Praying with His Mother” picture in the Church’s new Gospel Art Book — which image strikes me as a little forced, for some reason; maybe a reader can explain why — our images of Mary are tied very closely to the Biblical narrative. In modern times, we don’t seem to see many portraits of Mary that celebrate Mary as a woman and/or a mother, apart from specific New Testament stories. Why is that? Are such portraits “too Catholic”? Too closely tied to crucifixes and statues? Did we perhaps pull away from Mary as Madonna as part of that whole hypersensitivity toward angels-with-wings and crosses-as-jewelry of the Joseph Fielding Smith era?

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