Francis Schaeffer points to Fouquet’s painting The Red Virgin as an example of autonomous humanism developing in the fifteenth century. The painting is titled to be seen as a Madonna and Child, but the woman’s exposed breast is crass and Schaeffer points out that the face of Mary is actually the face of the French King’s mistress, Agnes Sorel. Shaeffer says, “Was this the Madonna about to feed her baby? No, the painting might be titled The Red Virgin, but the girl was the king’s mistress; and when one looked at the painting one could see what the king’s mistress’s breast looked like.” Shaeffer applauds the general movement toward realism, but here he says the meaning has been lost.
Jack D. says
Some attribute the likeness of Mary, even on such mundane places as the side of building or in an oil stain to Saint Apophenia. People see what they want to see. Perhaps there’s a bit of that at work here, too (for those who choose to see Mary and miss the other element of this image)?
Sonny Craig says
I was a student of Schaefer in the early late 70’s and early 80’s, and attended many of his teachings in the Santa Cruz area. I think Jack missed the point, it isn’t about what people see in the painting, Jack, apparitions of Mary have nothing to do with it. Schaeffer was, it was the point of the humanist artist, for example, to suggest through their medium an attack on the Church or the sacred in order to proliferate a cultural progression of the weakening of moral values in the society. By suggesting through his painting the simple pose of the King’s Mistress in the likeness of the Madonna (not the other way around), while adding a bit of the profane (the exposed breast, as they would consider it like pornography today), this then accomplishes the goal of moving the culture just one little step further down the road to automonous reasoning. Schaeffer explains all the history of art and culture during the rise and fall of Western Civilization in his book ‘How Shall We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture.’ The idea translated into today would be like somone displaying art where urine and excement are splashed onto a crucifix. However, that is a strained analogy albeit a correct one, as the former Red Virgin is so beautiful a masterpiece, Schaeffer himself chose that piece because of its overwhelming beauty and its subtle meaning which almost no one understood or understands today. Compared to what some do today in modern art to attack classical western moral values, the Red Virgin seems so tame that most people just don’t get the analogy.
And I landed on this site while looking for some of Scheffer’s words about the Red Virgin, as I have lost my copy of How We Then Shall Live. Remember not to loan your books out to Christian pastors, they are theives and God help me find one that is a patch to Francis Shaeffer.