The Madonna and Child up close and personal

Depictions of Mary with the baby Jesus are common sights this time of year, the humble figures in wood or plastic arrayed in Nativity scenes in front yards to celebrate Christmas.

But artwork of the Madonna and Child also is beloved year-round, in paintings, icons, statues and stained glass throughout Wichita, mostly in churches.

While the Madonna and Child are very much the provenance of the European art of the Middle Ages, their faces in art also reflect the races and cultures of the people who venerate them.

At Wichita’s Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception downtown, Mary and the baby Jesus can be seen in stained glass, in statues and in paintings, including the image most dear to Hispanics, the Virgin of Guadalupe.

“It’s very traditional in most Catholic churches that there’s at least a statue of Mary in the sanctuary space … usually balanced with a statue of St. Joseph on the other side,” said the Rev. David Lies, vicar general for the Catholic Diocese of Wichita. “There’s at least that physical representation if not also a painting or stained glass or other imagery.

“Essentially we honor Mary as very central to God’s plan of salvation. She was invited by God to be the mother of the son of God, so what we celebrate at Christmas is the Incarnation, when the son of God becomes human, he takes on flesh as we say, and that flesh comes from an earthly mother, Mary.”

People who see in Mary their own mother also sometimes want to see her as looking like them. Black Madonna and Child art can be found at Holy Savior Catholic Church at 13th and Chautauqua, in the church and in its offices. “African Virgin” hangs in the vestibule of the church and also in the lobby of the Spiritual Life Center in Bel Aire. It is from a series of paintings known by the name of “Jesus Mafa” that used as models residents of Central Africa who depicted various scenes from the life of Christ.

“There are, I’m sure, thousands of different depictions of the Blessed Virgin holding the child not only in our western cultures but in the Asian culture, the African-American culture, Eastern Europe, they all have their unique sort of favorite images of the Virgin and Child,” Lies said. In this diocese, the ethnic communities primarily are Hispanic and Vietnamese. Hispanics in particular venerate the Virgin of Guadalupe, who is depicted as pregnant with the child; the Vietnamese honor Our Lady of La Vang, who holds the child, his hand raised in blessing.

Images of Our Lady of Guadalupe adorn many churches, whether Hispanic or not — as well as cars and clothes, to name just a few other canvases that bear her likeness. Our Lady of La Vang can be seen inside and outside St. Anthony’s Church at Second and Ohio, which has a large Vietnamese congregation. One of the statues was enshrined behind the church earlier this year.

Icons of the Mother of God and her son can be seen at area Orthodox churches, including those at St. George Orthodox Christian Cathedral painted by the monks of Dormition Skete in Buena Vista, Colo.

“This is what is distinctive in Orthodoxy is that it’s atypical to see Mary depicted separate from Jesus as a baby,” said Victoria Foth Sherry, who served as director of the now-closed Heartland Orthodox Christian Museum in Topeka and now heads the tours committee at St. George in Wichita. The most prominent icon of the Mother and Son in the cathedral is in the apse, whose entirety is given to “More Spacious Than the Heavens.”

“Christ is standing as a small child in front of her, and she is presenting him to the world. Her womb became more spacious than the heavens; she is bigger than the heavens because she contained God.”

But a smaller icon on the panel of icons that faces the nave is one that Foth Sherry finds that people are more attracted to.

“It’s painted in egg tempera on wood, and it’s known as ‘The Sweet-Kissing.’ His cheek is pressed up to her cheek, and what you see is his love for his mother, which expresses his love for each one of us. … This is more expressive of that feeling that we have at Christmas of the Incarnation touching each one of us.”

A good time for the public to view the icons is during Vespers every Saturday evening at 6, Foth Sherry said. “It lasts about 45 minutes. You can take pictures. It’s not very crowded,” she said. Tours also can be arranged.

One of the pulls of art of the Madonna is her “in” with God, said Anne Hedeman, distinguished professor of art history at the University of Kansas.

“Mary as a mother, of course, is very important in Christian thought from the early Christian period on,” Hedeman said. “Her role really took off in the Gothic period, the 12th and 13th and onward centuries, where people really focused on her as a mediator, a way of getting access to Christ as someone who has been a human mother. She was viewed as an intercessor and a very important figure, so I think what Madonna paintings show is the beginning of that relationship.”

It’s hard to find depictions of the Madonna and Child in Wichita’s museums. The Wichita Art Museum has three pieces of the Madonna and Child, but none is on view. The Wichita Center for the Arts has a small plate by American Jean Ames displayed in its Collectors Gallery.

By contrast, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City has more than 50 works of the Madonna and Child, the majority of them in the European galleries.

“I went to Kansas City this weekend, and the Nelson Gallery has in their main foyer a huge Christmas tree with a giant creche with a Holy Family at the base of the tree,” said Wichita art appraiser Stephen Gleissner, a former curator at the Wichita Art Museum. “I don’t know why Wichita is so shy of displaying images of the Holy Family. … We just don’t have very many European art collections in Wichita.”

But art of the Madonna and Child is always being created anew by local art students and artists, and the Old-World European art is just what Wichita artist Rafael Robles seeks to imitate.

Robles grew up in Lima, Peru, learning art from his father, and has traveled to Europe to take in its artwork and incorporate it into his own. He moved to Wichita 15 years ago and works on church restorations, including the recent one at St. Anthony’s, and he always has a Madonna and Child in process on his easel.

“I use the technique that is 200-300 years old. … I work with the real stuff: wood, gold leaf, gilding. I don’t go to Michaels,” said Robles, who makes his own frames that are works of art in themselves. He even makes his own canvases, buying the linen and stretching it.

Several of his works are for sale at Karg Art Glass in Kechi.

“It’s a continuation of the masters,” Robles said of his oil paintings. “I follow, I see a piece, and this touches me. I want to continue the skills.”

This story was originally published December 18, 2015 at 2:48 PM with the headline "The Madonna and Child up close and personal."