The Visitation in the History of Art: the Evolution of the Gesture of Encounter Between Two Sacred Mothers

Despite her advanced age, Elizabeth was in fact pregnant with John the Baptist. Mary immediately set out and reached her; she entered her house and, when she greeted her, the little John leapt for joy, stirring in his mother's womb.

Luke does not mention the embrace, but this is not the only silence in a narrative that allows little room for realistic details and narrative coherence. It is, for example, highly unlikely that a young girl could have decided to travel alone; her urgency is not explained, nor is the reason for the visit made explicit.

These gaps were filled by later accounts, representations and commentaries, which imagined Mary accompanied by other women or by Joseph, and supposed that she went to Elizabeth either to help her during her pregnancy or «to congratulate her». The only motivation that can be deduced from the Gospel, however, is the desire to verify the unexpected pregnancy announced by the angel.

Luke was not interested in contingent narrative logic, but in the meaning of the event. According to ancient exegetes and modern commentators, the Visitation is not so much the mutual and affectionate welcome of two women as an epiphanic episode, the first manifestation of Jesus: the last prophet of the Old Testament recognizes the Messiah, the new time breaking into time. The embrace thus takes on new meanings, and the impulse that drives it is the power of the Holy Spirit. Narrative and iconographic tradition therefore made it the core and very image of the event. The embrace is also an iconographic device to translate into image and suspend the physical and emotional dynamism of the event: Mary's sudden arrival, Elizabeth's welcome, their emotion in sharing pregnancies as unexpected as they are extraordinary. In the Eastern tradition, the Visitation is called Aspasmos, meaning «warm greeting» and, precisely, «embrace».

According to an ancient Byzantine manual, the scene takes place «in a house. Inside, the Mother of God and Elizabeth embrace». Medieval iconography articulated the Visitation in three phases of the embrace: desired, in progress, and released. The first shows the women approaching one another, often with one advancing toward the other; in the second, the hands stretch out or touch; in the third, the embrace loosens, as in a concluding cadence.

Blessed Angelico, in the predella of the Annunciation (c. 1430), depicted the bodies still apart but with their arms already entwined. In the mosaic (1275-1300) of the Baptistery of Saint John in Florence, the torsos brush against each other while the legs remain still: as if a leap had preceded the step.

In many Romanesque representations, by contrast, Mary and Elizabeth appear rigidly frontal, with exaggerated and disproportionate arms — a symbolic sign of the desire for encounter rather than anatomical realism.