Diego Velázquez

The Immaculate Conception, 1618–19, Oil on canvas, 135 x 101.6 cm, The National Gallery, London; Bought with the aid of The Art Fund, 1974, NG6424, © National Gallery, London / Art Resource, NY

Queen of Heaven and Earth

Commentary by Robin Griffith-Jones

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Read by Ben Quash

And she cried out in her pangs of birth, in anguish for delivery. (Revelation 12:2)

The Carmelites, for whom Diego Velázquez probably made this painting, traced their origins to the Old Testament prophet Elijah, who saw on Mount Carmel ‘a little cloud rising from the sea’ (1 Kings 18:44). For the Carmelites, this cloud prefigured the Virgin Mary and her conception free from any stain (macula) of original sin.

Velázquez has surrounded the Virgin with clouds, trees, and sea, the attributes of God’s own Wisdom as Wisdom herself describes them in Ecclesiasticus 24:

I covered the earth like mist, my throne was a pillar of cloud. I alone have made a circuit of the heavens. I have grown tall as a cedar on Lebanon, as a cypress on Mount Hermon, as a palm in En-Gedi. I am like a conduit from a river, and my river has grown into a sea. (vv.3–5, 13–14, 31, own translation)

Meanwhile, the bridegroom speaks of his bride in the Song of Solomon: ‘She is a garden enclosed, a sealed fountain. Who is this rising like the dawn, fair as the moon, resplendent as the sun?’ (4:15; 6:10, own translation) So the Church speaks of Mary, virgin-mother; the painting’s circular temple is based on Rome’s temple to the virginal Vesta.

The woman in this vision is there for all to see. The sign simply ‘was seen’ (v.1); the seer does not say that as a privileged mystic ‘I saw’. We become the visionaries. The constellations take body and life. A young woman, far larger than the moon, emerges from the sun to fill the heavens. She is modest and demure; she is perhaps modelled on Velázquez’s own sister Juana (b.1609). This is a Queen of Heaven and earth alike with no crown or clutter, of an age to become the virginal mother of Jesus and so of all his beloved disciples (John 19:26–27). 

We nowadays revere astronomy; astrology, we disregard. To read Revelation we need to re-learn something of astrology’s language. Not in order to credit its claims; but to sense the disclosure of God’s purposes in the vast complexity of the heavens, here come down, on a beautifully translucent moon, to be within reach of us and of our hearts on earth.

See full exhibition for Revelation 12:1–6, 13–17

Revelation 12:1–6, 13–17

Revised Standard Version

12And a great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; 2she was with child and she cried out in her pangs of birth, in anguish for delivery. 3And another portent appeared in heaven; behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems upon his heads. 4His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven, and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child, that he might devour her child when she brought it forth; 5she brought forth a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne, 6and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, in which to be nourished for one thousand two hundred and sixty days.

 

13 And when the dragon saw that he had been thrown down to the earth, he pursued the woman who had borne the male child. 14But the woman was given the two wings of the great eagle that she might fly from the serpent into the wilderness, to the place where she is to be nourished for a time, and times, and half a time. 15The serpent poured water like a river out of his mouth after the woman, to sweep her away with the flood. 16But the earth came to the help of the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed the river which the dragon had poured from his mouth. 17Then the dragon was angry with the woman, and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and bear testimony to Jesus. And he stood on the sand of the sea.

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