Reproduction with the permission of Curtis and Cameron. Altered from their copyright photograph.
THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION.
By Murillo.
the picture of a well-preserved statue of Astarte which must have been the recipient of offerings before an altar in some of the ancient temples (p. 106).
A beautiful modern picture of Astarte has been worked out by Sargent in his frescoes on the walls of the Boston Public Library, and we can see on this very picture her similarity to Murillo’s ideal of Mary in his many paintings of the “Immaculate Conception.”
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There is a counterpart of the western Magna Dea in eastern Asia, but we no longer know it in its primitive form and have it only as it is represented in art in the shape of a Buddhist deity, a kind of female Buddha, called in China Kwan-Yon and in Japan, Benten. Here again in some cases we find that the fish is her symbol as it is that of the Syrian goddess, and she frequently presents a remarkable similarity to the Christian Virgin Mary. She is never pictured naked like the Greek Aphrodite but is always dressed in the most scrupulously decent fashion.[30]