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For the photos in the advent calendar, I'm thinking about global representations of the Madonna and Child throughout history. Under the flaps, we could include the image, image credits and either a quote from the artist or a sentence or two about the background of the specific piece.

Then, either next to the piece or on a shelf on the other side, I could do a longer write up on the general significance of the iconography of the Madonna and Child and then specifically reference the images we use under the flaps. Some connecting threads I've been thinking about below:

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I was thinking about use of the word "legend" and how it implies a map, especially since I'm circling around global representations of Mary.
Also thinking about what Jess said in terms of information around material imagery - I wonder if we could make a legend explaining some of the material imagery in the art piece? Maybe the legend could live on one of the shelves on the other side? I don't think I can see the full piece, but below are some of the items I've identified:

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"Yoruba people say “Orisha bi Iya kosi”.

This means: “There is no God/Orisha like a mother”

They also say “Ìyá Ni Wúrà” which is translated to mean “Mother is gold”.

The forgoing underscores the value and importance Yorubas place on Motherhood.

Láolú Senbanjo has created “Ìyá Ni Wúrà” series that pay homage to the Yorúbá culture/Ife arts. In Artist’s culture, mothers are the essential building block of relationships, identities, and society. Mothers symbolize familial ties, unconditional love and loyalty. The social context of motherhood and the meanings attached to birthing events are a good starting point for appreciating Yoruba constructions of the institution. At the moment of birth, two entities are born - a baby and a mother...

...In every piece, figures of the mother/ mother and child stand against a midnight blue background that warms the canvas. Its expansiveness and depth is symbolic of the figure’s divine femininity. It shows that she exists outside of time and place⁠—in an in-between.

Gold haloes surrounding their heads depict the sacred and divine motherhood and mothers as healers, and as the Yoruba saying goes, “Iya ni wura iyebiye Ti a ko le f’owora” meaning ”Mother is a precious gold that cannot be purchased with money”."

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"The relationship between Christ and the mother is really important for this project. If you'll notice the mother is a symbol that is at once female and male for me, I wanted to create a body of work in which gender had no fixed form; in which that idea of the transportation of the physicality of Christ into a much more spiritual state is actually mirrored in the ways in which we see gender."

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KEHINDE WILEY, Lamentation, Petit Palais

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"It is a surprise to many that Islam traditionally has thought so highly of the Blessed Virgin Mary. She is called by Muslims Miriam or Maryam in Arabic, and also Umm Isa, or “Mary, the mother of Jesus,” or simply, Sayyida, the Lady."

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COMMENTARY: How should we approach the message she sends to the world at this historical moment?

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"I thought it fitting now to explore The Study Quran on the theme of Mary, Mother of Jesus. The ample index tells us that there are more than 50 references to Jesus in the Quran, and more than 15 to Mary. They are mentioned in the editors’ commentary many more times, as the index shows us. The editors point out that Mary is the only woman named in the Quran; while most such named figures are prophets, there is debate about Mary’s status, some listing her among the prophets, others preferring to say that she is “an exceptionally pious woman with the highest spiritual rank among women” (763)...

...They add that in a hadith (traditional saying), “the Prophet names Mary as one of the four spiritually perfected women of the world,” (763) who will “lead the soul of blessed women to Paradise” (143). In Sura 66 (Forbiddance), Mary is evoked again respectfully, “the daughter of Imran, who preserved her chastity. Then We breathed therein Our Spirit, and she confirmed the Words of her Lord and His Books; and she was among the devoutly obedient” (66:12). One commentator, Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, takes this to mean that Mary “believed in all previous revelations.”"

https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2015/12/18/what-islam-really-teaches-about-virgin-mary

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The Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion is an ancient site in Axum, in northern Ethiopia, and holds special significance as a place of pilgrimage for Ethiopian Orthodox Christians.

The compound includes the old church, a more modern cathedral built in the 1950s by Emperor Haile Selassie, and a chapel claimed to house the Ark of the Covenant (the most sacred relic of the Israelites, which contains two of the tablets of the Ten Commandments).

According to local tradition, the queen of the people of Saba and the wife of Solomon (as) was from this region, and when their son Menelik I visited Solomon (as) in Palestine, he is claimed to have brought back the Ark to safety in Ethiopia in around 950 BCE. Most historians are not convinced of the authenticity of this claim, but the local Orthodox Christians believe the account and come to the church in great numbers each year on 30th November for the Festival of Tsion Mariam. An ancient town that has been continuously inhabited for almost 3,000 years, Axum has historic links to early Judaism.

Axum had a Jewish population and was known as a tolerant kingdom. Not long after Emperor Constantine had adopted Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire in 325 CE, King Ezana of Axum adopted the religion for his people in northern Ethiopia around 340 CE, and over the centuries, Ethiopian emperors were crowned at the Throne of David in the compound. The Ethiopian Orthodox tradition is similar to Coptic Christianity in north Africa, but also leans towards Judaism in areas such as diet, the role of women, fasting and circumcision. [1]

The original church is thought to date from the 4th century CE during the time of Frumentius, who brought Christianity to Ethiopia and became the first bishop of Axum, and was built over a former pagan shrine. [2] The Ethiopian Christians were more aligned to the Coptic Church in Cairo than to Roman Catholicism. The church grew in strength, and it was to this community that a group of early Muslims were sent to for safety due to the persecution from the Quraish tribe. They were granted freedom to practise their religion in the kingdom of what was then known as Abyssinia.

The old church has been destroyed and rebuilt at least twice throughout history, and there is no doubt of its significance for the Ethiopian Orthodox Christian community.
ENDNOTES

1. H. L. Gates, Wonders of the African World (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999), 72.

2. P. Briggs, Ethiopia (UK: Bradt Travel Guides Ltd, 2019), 311.

T. W. Arnold, The Preaching of Islam (New Delhi: Aryan Books International, 1998).

S. Burstein, Ancient African Civilizations - Kush and Axum (Princeton: Markus Weiner Publishers, 2009).

J. P. Martin, African Empires - Volume 1 (USA: Trafford Publishing, 2016).

H. U. Rahman, A Chronology of Islamic History 570-1000 CE (London: Ta-Ha Publishers, 1995).

A. Samuels, Nubia - The Rise and Fall of African Empires (UK: Amazon Books, 2017).

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Places of Worship - The Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion

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Location: Axum, EthiopiaBelief: ChristianityEra: 350 CE The Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion is an ancient site in Axum, in northern Ethiopia, and holds special significance as a place [...]

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st. mary's ethiopian orthodox tewhado church in los angeles

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St. Mary's Ethiopian Orthodox Tewhado Church in Los Angeles

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St. Mary's Ethiopian Orthodox Tewhado Church in Los Angeles

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Result of colonization, response to colonization (Ecuadorian), response to difficult topics within the church (Mary the Milk Giver), apparitions around the world (Asia), interpretation of contemporary topics (Kehinde Wiley), cultural interpretations (Ethiopian, Youruba), application in other religions (Muslim)

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Our Lady of Valvanera

1762

Miguel Cabrera (Mexican, 1695–1768)

This small painting on copper was made for private devotional use by Miguel Cabrera, one of the leading painters in Mexico City. Although the Virgin of Valvanera was venerated in the Rioja region in northern Spain, she was also popular in Mexico in the mid-1760s, and Cabrera gave this representation of the Madonna the features and skin tone of a young Mexican woman.
The original Virgin of Valvanera was a painted wood sculpture said to have been made by Saint Luke and brought to Spain before 700. During the Muslim conquest of Spain, the sculpture was hidden in the trunk of an oak tree. According to legend, the sculpture and a box of relics were rediscovered centuries later by Nuño Oñez, a thief and murderer who repented and became a devout hermit. Oñez and the angel who told him the location of the sculpture can be seen in the background on the right.

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"This nurturing depiction of the Madonna and Child shows Mary offering her breast to her son. Her ornate, gold trimmed clothing and large and bright halo represent her holiness. The Christ Child, wrapped in cloth related to Indigenous Peruvian weaving, points to the colonial origins of this painting. The introduction of Christianity and the simultaneous destruction of Indigenous culture by the Spanish and other invaders in South America influenced art of the period. This devotional painting includes a mix of overt European Christian imagery with more subtle nods to the Indigenous American origins of the painter and this work’s original audience."

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Photograph shows an American Indian woman, from the Plateau region, possibly Spokane, with a baby in a cradleboard.