Took my students to the Met yesterday and sent them off to do a reading task. Tired, wandered into a small room of mainly medieval things with a mauve sofa where I sat to rest. This image of Mary caught my eye:

I noticed in it what I had noticed before for the first time in the French apse at the cloisters — perhaps this is so obvious that it goes without saying? Mary is ensconced in a vulva. The little head just above hers (not so evident in this cellphone pic) is clearly a clitoris. I don’t think I’m just rorscharching here — the one in the apse was even more clearly anatomical — in it Mary seemed to be surrounded by petal-like labia.

I don’t know enough about the art of that period to say whether this imagery was subversive or not, whether it was a (possibly unconscious) covert survival manifestation of older matriarchal beliefs, or whether it was a consciously codified, even typical, way to represent the virgin.

I’ll look into this…