“... at Ballinspittle in Ireland, where in 1985 a statue began wobbling before crowds of pilgrims, the Madonna’s message has been that however buffeted the faithful are by change, by reform, by the pressures and problems of modernity, she is on their side to help. The anthropologist William Christian Jr has explored the interpenetration of belief and ...”

“... of Helfgott which the film itself established – such is the logic of the culture industry. Madonna as Evita as Madonna as Evita. Or possibly Wilde as Bunthorne as Wilde as Bunthorne. For the co-extensive circulation of the two Helfgotts very nearly replicates Richard D’Oyly Carte’s American use of Wilde in a ...”

“... readers in mind of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and other pop stars like Michael Jackson and Madonna.’ Yes, precisely. From the outset Liszt is characterised as a celeb whose life was bounded by the 19th-century equivalents of the private jet, the billion dollar yacht and the bevy of air-brained blondes. It’s true that there was a time when he might ...”

“... once and for all, to the notion that Cassatt is nothing but a purveyor of sentimental, secularised Madonna and Child images for the mass market. Although, later in life, she specialised in mothers and children, as Griselda Pollock points out, the images are usually freshly observed and modern in their psychological understanding of the relationship, as well as ...”

“... did to other luxury accessories, such as the Islamic carpet and pagan Greek reliefs with which the Madonna is in this case also – and no less conspicuously – supplied. A lamp or an egg given special prominence – for instance, serving as a device on the reverse of a medal or on the back or the lid of a small panel painting – would merit this sort of ...”

“... sad blue and pink people, but more substantial. Then there were the monumental bronzes: the Madonna and Child in Cavendish Square and the St Michael at Coventry, for example. These were well-liked by most people and liked very much indeed by many. Because they are whole figures, not just heads, you can see how Epstein handled poses: they tend to be ...”

“... the NHS ward that serves as a site of spiritual desolation in Memento Mori (1959). In ‘The Black Madonna’, a story published in 1958, a Catholic couple’s creed, it’s suggested, is at odds with their materialist smugness, a smugness that’s given a very specific satirical colouring: The Parkers were among the few tenants of Cripps House who owned a ...”

“... epigraphs: from Marilyn Monroe, Kafka, Lenny Bruce (who occupies an entire page), Billy Wilder, Madonna (or the ‘popular singer Madonna Ciccone’, as Smith has it, a tic that runs throughout the book), Walter Benjamin (or ‘the popular wise guy Walter Benjamin’). Each chapter has a cute digest at its ...”

“... best attested early works. The figures are strangely tentative and childish, and only the Madonna has any personality at all, a rather sentimental one. The landscape, on the other hand, is beautiful in places, and utterly different from that of any painting known to have been made in Venice in the first decade of the 16th century. The dating of the ...”

“... and for his knack for hanging out with all the right people (Haring! Debbie Harry! Burroughs! Madonna!). Pieces about him often adopt a breathy, tragic tone. ‘Did he have a chance?’ one reviewer of the Barbican show asked. ‘Did all those punk luminaries ever think to stop him taking drugs?’ The first painting the visitor sees – to one side of ...”

“... twenties in the first picture. Around that time he was painting both devotional works like Gypsy Madonna (seen here), in which the reserve and modesty of the Virgins of his erstwhile master Giovanni Bellini is replaced by a more robust humanity, and pastoral pieces like the Louvre Concert champêtre (long attributed to Giorgione, now more often to ...”

“... Ilaria to which Beck thinks we must not pay too much attention are also evident, however, in the Madonna and Child that Jacopo carved for Ferrara at a slightly earlier date. Here they lighten the massive folds of cloak over the Virgin’s knees and give a spring to the pose of the Child who stands on her lap. Even the little pointed shoe which emerges from ...”

“... with repulsion), jealousy, separation, melancholy, anxiety; there is a blissfully sensual Madonna from 1894-95 (a foetus and spermatozoa decorate the frame in a lithographed version). These pictures are all in one way or another autobiographical. When Munch paints figures in a landscape that carry those feelings, or even unpeopled landscapes, it is ...”

“... with the Church of England, Coptic and Ethiopian, Polish (with a figure of the redoubtable Black Madonna of Czestochowa) and Old Catholic. The Old Catholics are pretty well spread about the world. During the last war they were helpful to Anglicans in Java and even in Nazi Germany: their Dutch and Swiss congregations support an Anglican diocese in South ...”

“... This is precisely what he did on his return to Rome, where, between 1518 and 1521, he carved the Madonna del Parto for Santa Maria del Pepolo – perhaps the most monumental of all the sculptures of this subject created in the Renaissance, not excepting those by Michelangelo, whose Virgins in Bruges and in the Medici Chapel are more vulnerable in mood and ...”