In the centre of a darkened gallery at the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), Bengaluru, Sandro Botticelli’s Madonna and Child gleams within its gilded frame. The Virgin Mother, whose alabaster skin, high forehead, hooded eyes, elongated nose and jaw, and small but pronounced Cupid’s bow bear a striking resemblence to the women in the Italian Renaissance painter’s classic masterpieces, Primavera and The Birth of Venus, is dressed in colours which hint at Christian duality: her scarlet robe signifies her humanness and eventual sacrifice, while her blue mantle represents the cosmos, a nod to the divinity she has carried within her.In her arms, she cradles a naked, chubby male child who looks away from her into the distance, her expression deeply melancholic. “She knows what is to come,” says art historian and academician Naman Ahuja, pointing out other details in the painting that foreshadow Christ’s crucifixion, death, and resurrection, such as the architectural framing of the background, which resembles a cross, and the stone gargoyles behind Mary, a visual warning.
Sandro Botticelli’s Madonna and Child g
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement
While Botticelli’s Madonna and Child, a 93 × 73 cm tempera and oil tempera on wood panel, is indeed a masterpiece, it is not the only one on display at this new exhibition, One Mother, Many Mother Tongues, co-curated by Naman and the director of the Italian Cultural Centre in India, Andrea Anastasio. The result of a collaboration between the Consulate General of Italy in Bengaluru, the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) and the Ministry of Culture, it has been supported by the Prestige Group, with Rezwan Razack’s Museum of Indian Paper Money as cultural partner.Some of the other artworks, which are part of the exhibition, include a tiny, 4500-year-old terracotta sculpture from Harappa, a delicate ivory carving of a mother balancing a girl (the only image, which depicts a female child) on her head from Bengal, statuesque stone effigies of ancient Indian goddesses like Chamunda, Skanda Mata, Matrika, Hariti and Jyeṣṭhā and a collection of Etruscan representations of Mater Matuta, an indigenous goddess of fertility, childbirth, and ripening grain, later co-opted and syncretised by the Romans.These artefacts, spanning geography, cultures, media, and millennia, collectively dissect how a persistent visual motif—mother and child—migrates across borders, changing identity according to region, religion, language, and culture, as the exhibition release states. “Through these images, it explores how birth represents not only the creation of physical life, but also the emergence of ideas, beliefs, and cultural identities.“Like a child, the symbol of the future, these ideas are nurtured and protected through compassion and, when required, through formidable strength,” it further states, adding that the exhibition also examines how images shape and reinforce ideas within societies, inviting reflection on other questions that remain relevant today: Is motherhood the primary framework through which the feminine is granted agency? How have societies defined parenthood and gender roles through visual culture? Do ancient representations of the feminine always need to be understood through the lens of the Mother Goddess?Genesis and more
