Virgin and Christ Child (nun's badge)
- unknown artist
Unknown artist, Virgin and Child (Nun's Badge), 1600s. Oil paint and gold leaf on copper with inlaid wood frame with tortoiseshell back; 5½ in. dia. Gift of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, Denver, Colorado, 2005.92.
Nun’s badges (escudos) are unique to Mexico. Invented there in the 1600s, they were worn at the throat by Conceptionist and Hieronymite nuns over the habits of their respective orders. Depicting the Virgin and saints significant to the order and/or the individual nun, they were usually painted on round or oval sheets of copper and framed in tortoiseshell or wood. Many of the most famous artists in Mexico painted nun’s badges, and some are signed.
This escudo depicts the Madonna del Popolo, an icon venerated at the church of Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome. It is often confused with another Roman image of Mary, that worshipped at Santa Maria Maggiore (see 1990.328). Both images were thought to be copies after an original painted by the apostle Luke and thus true representations of the Virgin’s likeness.
– Donna Pierce, 2015; revised by Kathryn Santner, Frederick and Jan Mayer Fellow of Spanish Colonial Art, 2023