Free downloadable Catholic paintings of the Virgin Mary
This large altarpiece was in the artist's studio when he died, and parts of the composition appear incomplete. Some figures lack color, and Reni never finished the wooden structure.
Different from the paintings of the past masters and their interpretation of this scene, Bouguereau gives a unique view of this sacred event. Although he follows the standards of traditional Christian religious imagery, the atmosphere is entirely different, mainly because of Mary’s presence.
The Holy Family consists of the Child Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and Saint Joseph. The subject became popular in art from the 1490s on, but veneration of the Holy Family was formally begun in the 17th century by Saint François de Laval, the first bishop of New France, who founded a confraternity
The Adoration of the Shepherds, in the Nativity of Jesus in art, is a scene in which shepherds are near witnesses to the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, arriving soon after the actual birth.
The French artist William-Adolphe Bouguereau concluded the oil painting entitled Sainte Famille, translated as The Holy Family, in the year 1863 and was exhibited in the Paris Salon shortly after.
In the late 1400s and early 1500s Rouen was an established and important center of book production. The city’s cathedral had a wealthy chapter that spent large sums of money to commission books and to maintain its extensive library.
Saint Ildefonsus or Ildephonsus was a scholar and theologian who served as the metropolitan Bishop of Toledo for the last decade of his life. His Gothic name was Hildefuns.
In this work the artist creates a strikingly beautiful pair of figures whose serene poses and serious facial expressions project an aura of sadness without sentimentality.
The infant Jesus embraces his mother with his left arm while tenderly grasping at the ruff of her shirt with his right hand.
This life-size painting, a serene vision of angels serenading the sleeping Jesus in the arms of a graceful young Mary, is one of the most important works by Bouguereau in the United States.
According to the ancient Martyrologies, Margaret was the daughter of a pagan priest named Aedesius. Her mother having died soon after her birth, Margaret was nursed by a Christian woman five or six leagues (6.9–8.3 miles) from Antioch.
The star-haloed Virgin holds the infant Jesus in her arms. She is standing in front of a throne with Byzantine motifs, inlaid with colored stones. With his legs curled up, the child raises his arms, making the gesture of Christ blessing.
The Annunciation, also referred to as the Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Annunciation of Our Lady, or the Annunciation of the Lord, is the Christian celebration of the announcement by the Archangel Gabriel to the Blessed Virgin Mary, that she would conceive and bear a son through a…
The Adoration of the Magi or Adoration of the Kings is the name traditionally given to the subject in the Nativity of Jesus in art in which the three Magi, represented as kings, especially in the West, having found Jesus by following a star, lay before him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh…
A Madonna is a representation of Mary, either alone or with her child Jesus. These images are central icons for both the Catholic and Orthodox churches. The word is from Italian ma donna 'my lady'.
The Immaculate Conception of El Escorial is a circa 1660–1665 oil religious painting by the Spanish Baroque artist Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, now in the Museo del Prado in Madrid.
In a composition borrowed from imperial Byzantine art, Mary is shown seated on a jeweled throne with the Christ child and flanked by archangels Michael and Gabriel. Above, Christ appears in a radiant light supported by two angels.
The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary is a circa 1678 oil religious painting by the Spanish Baroque artist Bartolomé Esteban Murillo. Murillo's many artistic depictions of the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary were enormously influential on later art.
On the night of February 4, 1428, a devastating fire broke out in a schoolhouse in Forlì, a town in northern Italy. Eyewitnesses reported that everything in the school burned except a humble woodcut representing the Madonna and Child.
This painting, probably meant to hang in a church, is also called The Two Trinities. It alludes on the one hand to Mary, Joseph, and the Christ Child, and on the other hand to God the Father, the Holy Ghost (in the shape of a dove), and Christ.
Rose of Viterbo, T.O.S.F., was a young woman born in Viterbo, then a contested commune of the Papal States. She spent her brief life as a recluse, who was outspoken in her support of the papacy.
Annunciation of Ustyug (Russian: Устюжское Благовещение) is a Russian Annunciation icon, created in Novgorod in the 12th century, and one of the few icons which survived the Mongol invasion of Rus'. The Annunciation of Ustyug is currently held in the Tretyakov Gallery.
The Assumption of the Virgin Mary or Assumption of the Holy Virgin, is a painting by Peter Paul Rubens, completed in 1626 as an altarpiece for the high altar of the Cathedral of Our Lady, Antwerp, where it remains.
The painting depicts the Virgin Mary while receiving the marriage ring by Saint Joseph, in front of a priest of the Temple of Jerusalem. Michelino painted a Dove of the Holy Ghost above Joseph, to underline the supernatural choice of him as Mary's husband.
