Use this Art Guide video in Step 3: Contemplation of Columban 
A resource to help you pray using the images and Art Guide of the 2023 Columban Art Calendar.
Our Lady Worshipping the Child, c.1518–1520 (oil on canvas) Correggio (Antonio Allegri) (c.1489–1534). Uffizi Gallery, Florence. Bridgeman Images
Correggio was an Italian painter who worked mainly in Renaissance Florence during the early sixteenth century. The distinctive theme of this picture, while in essence an evocation of the Nativity, is formally entitled “Adoration of the Christ Child” and presents a new iconographic interpretation that had a lasting impact on Italian painting from the late fourteenth century.
Mary is represented alone as she kneels to adore her newborn babe, seen resting on the earth upon a bed of straw. This new understanding of the Nativity was directly inspired by the vision of St Bridget of Sweden while in the Holy Land. Bridget’s account of the vision has her seeing Mary give birth “as if light passed through her body”. After the birth, the infant Jesus was bathed in a divine light. Bridget wrote: “... Verily though all of a sudden, I saw the glorious Infant lying on the ground naked and shining … When therefore the Virgin felt that she had already born her Child, she immediately worshipped him, her head bent down and her hands clasped, with great honour and reverence and said to him: Be welcome, my God, my Lord, and my Son.”
The compelling meditative focus of this painting aims to draw the viewer to acknowledge Mary as mother of the divine redeemer and the one who, from the moment of the Annunciation, welcomed the child in her womb as Emmanuel, God with us.
