Maria Hilf

A young mother in plain clothes holds her naked child, who reaches up to touch her cheek. Cranach painted it for the Saxon court, and it became one of the most copied images of Mary in the whole Alpine region.

The story behind the painting

Lucas Cranach the Elder, court painter to the Elector of Saxony and a friend of Martin Luther, painted this picture for the Saxon court in Dresden. On a visit there, Archduke Leopold V chose it as a guest gift and took it first to Passau, where he was bishop, and then to Innsbruck, where he ruled. During the Thirty Years' War it was publicly venerated at Marian devotions, and around 1650 the people of Innsbruck received it for their parish church, today's cathedral. The dates disagree: Wikidata gives 1517, while the German Wikipedia article says it was made after 1537.

What to look for

A young woman, dressed like an ordinary woman of the people, sits turned half to the left against a dark background, shown in three-quarter length. She wears a blue underdress and a red wrap, and her long blond hair is combed back and held by a band. A thin, transparent veil covers her head and falls over the child too. The naked boy stands upright on her lap, turned toward her, and reaches with his right hand for her cheek. Apart from the red and blue of her clothes, she has no sign that marks her as Mary or as a saint.

Meaning and intent

The picture follows the Byzantine type called Eleousa, or Glykophilousa, in which the child presses close to his mother's face. Cranach, the Protestant reformer's friend, made that old model feel close and domestic: no crown, no halo, only a mother and a baby in a moment of tenderness. That simplicity may be why it spoke to so many people. In Innsbruck it came to embody Mary, Help of Christians, the meaning of the name Mariahilf, and it was venerated in public during the hardships of the Thirty Years' War.

Legacy

The image spread in countless copies and variations, above all in the Alps: on altars in churches and chapels, as religious painting on house fronts and as private devotional pictures. Early copies include one given in 1660 to the Mariahilf church in Vienna and one painted in 1671 for St. Dionysius in Neunkirchen near Weiden. Copies, sometimes as reliefs or sculptures, often became centres of their own pilgrimages in Bavaria, Austria, South Tyrol, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and beyond. In 1989 the Austrian post put it on a stamp for 25 years of the Diocese of Innsbruck. The original still stands on the high altar of Innsbruck Cathedral.