Virgin Most Powerful

She has been holding the child for a thousand years. The Madonna of the icon — solemn, tender, eternal — gazes inward, her massive figure carved in the warm brown tones of aged wood and candlelight, her veil starred with the ancient symbols of her grace. She is the mother of all sorrows, the protector, the intercessor. She has been asked to carry everything. And then, in the upper corner of the sky, something breaks the silence. A figure comes swinging in — brightly costumed, lasso in hand, red boots kicking through white space — Wonder Woman, the other great protector, the one who wears her power openly and fights back. She is small against the Madonna's ancient weight, but she is unmistakably here, arriving with all the boldness of the present tense crashing into the eternal past. Kathryn Cirincione, who grew up in a family of church painters and muralists, who has carried the visual traditions of Southern Italy through Peace Corps service, through teaching, through decades of making art on the California coast, understands deeply what these images mean to women. She places them side by side — not to mock, but to wonder. Who protects the protector? Who saves the one who saves us all? The image holds the question open, generous and alive, leaving the answer entirely to you.