The Greek name for this image is Hodigitria, "She who shows us the way." Ever since the icon arrived in Constantinople, copies have proliferated, appearing in churches and homes throughout the Christian world. Among Eastern Christians the Hodigitria is the most venerated image of the Virgin and Child because tradition asserts that the original was painted by St. Luke the Evangelist on the kitchen table of the Holy Family’s house in Nazareth.
Empress Eudoxia’s icon vanished long ago, so it is impossible to say how old it may have been. There are other paintings of Our Lady said to be the handiwork of St. Luke — including Poland’s famous Black Madonna of Czestochowa — but none of these sacred images date from the first century. Nonetheless, the roots of this legend can be found in St. Luke’s Gospel. Of all the evangelists, Luke provides us with the most information about the Blessed Virgin Mary. He alone gives us a detailed account of the Annunciation, and of Mary’s visit to her cousin Elizabeth. St. Luke is the only evangelist to give us the full story of what happened the night Christ was born.
Ancient commentators on the Gospels wondered if St. Luke’s source was Mary herself. His writing style is so vivid that later readers suggested that Luke must have been an artist. If he were an artist, wouldn’t it be natural for him to paint a portrait of Our Lady with the Christ Child in her arms?
This legend was so firmly established by the Renaissance that artists’ guilds were placed under St. Luke's patronage. Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Jan Vermeer are a few of the Old Masters who belonged to the Guild of St. Luke. In the 15th century a school for painters, the Academy of St. Luke, was established in Rome; this academy is still in operation today.
St. Luke may or may not have been an artist, but we do know that he was a physician from Antioch. In addition to what Luke tells us about the Holy Family, he also records six miracles of our Lord that occur nowhere else in the New Testament, including the raising of the widow of Nain’s son, the healing of the 10 lepers, and the restoration of Malchus’s ear after St. Peter cut it off. Eighteen parables are also unique to St. Luke, including such beloved stories as the Prodigal Son, the Rich Man and Lazarus, and the Pharisee and the Publican in the Temple. And, of course, in the Acts of the Apostles Luke gives us the earliest account of the beginnings of the Church.
No one can say if St. Luke did indeed paint a portrait of the Virgin and Child. But what he left us in his Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles is equally priceless.
Thomas Craughwell is the author of Saints for Every Occasion (Stampley Enterprises, 2001).
(This article courtesy of the Arlington Catholic Herald
.)
