Free downloadable Catholic paintings of the Virgin Mary
Daniel Hopfer I’s visionary image depicts the Virgin sobbing before Christ’s betrayal, scourging, and crucifixion. Knowing her son will die a gruesome death, she feels physical pain at his departure.
Etching in black on off-white laid paper
Germany, early 16th Century. Medium: Woodcut
Folio 58 recto, showing Pentecost, from a Book of Hours (Use of Rome) printed on parchment in Paris in 1510 by Guillaume Le Rouge.
The images depict Saints Athanasius and Nicholas (top left); Saint George (bottom left); The King of Kings and Great [High Priest] Jesus Christ, sided by the Mother of God and Saint John (center panel); Saints Paraskevi and Marina (top right); Saint Demetrius (bottom right).
Carlo Crivelli’s vivid style married the beautiful with the grotesque. Here, the Virgin Mary and Saint John the Evangelist gaze in anguish at Jesus on the cross.
Orthodox icon of the Mother of God Trenousa (Virgin and Child) from the 17th-18th century.
An early Byzantine icon of Virgin Mary with the infant Jesus, 6th century AD in the collection of the Khanenko Museum, Kyiv, Ukraine.
Sir Anthony van Dyck was a Flemish Baroque artist who became the leading court painter in England after success in the Southern Netherlands and Italy.
Illuminated manuscripts are among the finest works of Armenian art as the "Word" has been the primary focus of veneration in the Armenian Church since its founding in the early fourth century. In the fifteenth century under Mongol domination in the region of Khizan near Lake Van (now...
The Virgin Mary, known as "the rose without thorns" for having been born free of original sin, holds the symbolic flower while sitting upon the Throne of Wisdom. The scroll held by an angel reads: "Come over to me, all ye that desire me, and be filled...
Donato de’ Bardi’s style brings together Netherlandish and French influences, focusing on refined detail and careful study of light. At the center of this painting, which is still in its original frame, Donato captures the sheltering affection between the infant Christ and Madonna. Gesturing to the goldfinch in his...
This work plays with our expectations of the flatness of the painted surface. Using a technique of gilded gesso, the artist gave Saint Nicholas’s miter and the crowns of the holy figures a raised surface. The Virgin’s robes and the intricate, angled throne also create a sense of...
These three panels are from an altarpiece painted for a Dominican church in the Marchigian town of Ascoli Piceno. It is possible that the child was originally shown reaching for a flying bird, his frequent attribute. The cracked marble dais is a recurrent feature of Crivelli's work. On...
Foppa was the founder of Renaissance painting in Milan, where he worked for the dukes. In addition to major fresco cycles and altarpieces, he also painted touching images of the Madonna and Child for private devotion. This one dates to about 1480 and shows them before a rose hedge—the...
Images of the Virgin Eleousa, the Virgin of Compassion, developed in the later Byzantine centuries and profoundly influenced the art of the Latin West. Here, the intimate poses of the heads and hands display the warm emotional attachment of the Virgin and Child. The fifteenth-century Latin inscription on the...
This icon depicts the Dormition of the Mother of God (her "falling asleep" or death). The central figure is Christ, who stands over Mary's body holding a small, swaddled child. This child might represent Mary’s pure soul, which Christ is receiving to carry into heaven....
This scene depicting the Virgin Mary, her infant son Jesus Christ, and various saints and prophets also includes the kneeling figure of Louise de Bourbon (1495–1545), a member of the French royal family (Note the inscription LOYSE DE BOURBON on the hem of her dark habit). She was the...
This painting is an altarpiece, a devotional image used in a Christian church, and many of the details are religious symbols. The walled garden, for instance, refers to the garden in the Bible’s Song of Songs and is associated with the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ. The...
Triptychs (hinged three-paneled works) such as this were often placed on or behind the altars of medieval churches and private chapels. The central panel of this triptych shows people mourning the death of Jesus. The city in the background is Bruges, where the artist worked. Saint John the Baptist...
Lucas Cranach the Elder worked in a time of religious upheaval. Martin Luther (a close associate of Cranach) led the Protestant Reformation challenging the Catholic Church, arguing that man could have a direct relationship with God without the need for a priest to intermediate. Cranach adapted familiar Catholic imagery to...
Mary, the mother of Jesus, insists you look her in the eye. She has long inspired intense devotion. Christians believed that a relationship with her would bring them closer to her son, and worshippers identified with her role as a mother. Segna portrays them both as very human and approachable—...
The grief-stricken faces of the Virgin Mary and John the Evangelist once faced another panel referencing the Crucifixion. Their expressive features and weighty three dimensionality make their sorrow over Jesus’s death palpably human, while the golden space that they inhabit reinforces their sanctified status. Netherlandish devotional scenes sought...
The artwork titled "Madonna and Child" is a wall painting from the 12th century, attributed to an anonymous artist from Faras, a region renowned for its Christian art in medieval Nubia (located in modern-day Sudan). It is badly damaged, but one could image the beauty and wonder...
