Black Madonna at the Regina Mundi
From Wikipedia:
"Black Madonna or Black Virgin is a statue or painting of Mary in which she is depicted with dark or black skin. This name applies in particular to European statues or pictures of a Madonna
which are of special interest because her dark face and hands seem to
need explanation. In this specialised sense "Black Madonna" does not
apply to images of the Virgin Mary portrayed as explicitly black African, which are popular in Africa and areas with large black populations, such as the United States. However, it has been argued that European Black Madonnas have their roots in African traditions (see below)"
"Monique Scheer approaches this topic from the perspective of symbolic anthropology. She believes that these statues and paintings came to be perceived as Black Madonnas after the Middle Ages, perhaps as part of a Counter-Reformation
tendency to promote "the veneration of miraculous images of Mary". She
discusses the "symbolic meanings communicated by the dark skin of the
Madonna" rather than focussing on the origins of their colour, and
suggests that these symbolic meanings have been different in different
eras and contexts."
