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Edvard Munch's Madonna

Loving Woman (Madonna), 1895–1902, lithograph. Munch Museum, Oslo.gif

Madonna is a famous painting by the Norwegian expressionist Edvard Munch. Munch painted five versions of the Madonna between 1894 and 1895, using oils on canvas. One of them measures 91 x 70.5 cm.

One version belongs to the Munch Museum of Oslo, while another is owned by businessman Nelson Blitz.

The title suggests a depiction of Mary, the mother of Jesus, although it is a highly unusual representation of Mary, who until the 20th century was usually represented in high art as a chaste, mature woman. The figure in this painting appears to be young, perhaps a teenager, and is sensualized, if not eroticized, by her twisting, expressive pose. She stretches her arms behind herself and arches her back, increasing the viewer's consciousness of her physical body. Yet even in this unusual pose, she embodies some of the key elements of canonical representations of the Virgin: she has a quietness and a calm confidence about her. Her eyes are closed, expressing modesty, but she is simultaneously lit from above; her body is seen, in fact, twisting toward the light so as to catch more of it, even while she does not face it with her eyes. These elements suggest aspects of conventional representations of the Annunciation. See also: Madonna (art).

This image shows the armed robbers as they carried off The Scream and Madonna in the daylight raid. They then loaded the paintings into the black car and fled the scene.

For more details on the theft see The Scream.

On Sunday, 22 August 2004, Madonna, along with a version of The Scream, were stolen from the Munch Museum by masked men wielding firearms. The robbers forced the museum guards to lie down on the floor while they snapped the cable securing the paintings to the wall and escaped in a black Audi A6 station wagon, which police later found abandoned.

Both paintings were recovered by Oslo Police on 31 August 2006. The following day, Munch Museum Director Ingebjørg Ydstie said that the condition of the paintings was much better than expected and that the damages, including a 2.5 cm hole in the Madonna, could be repaired.^[1]

• Madonna in the MoMA Online Collection