There is none of the fanfare of Gabriel, the pomp of the magi, or the bumpkin awe of the shepherds.Some artists, taken with the idea of the infant John leaping in the womb, actually show the leap.1230–1250), Elizabeth, visibly more pregnant, looks almost put out that Mary has stolen her thunder. Elizabeth wears the then fashionable “stomacher”, a piece of triangular fabric sewn into the front of the bodice to conceal the loosened lacing of expanding waists. Sometimes Mary and Elizabeth embrace, sometimes they stand apart, sizing up each other’s bumps, happy and hormonal.

After so many “barren” years, here is Elizabeth, pregnant and beaming with the future John the Baptist.After the 17th century, sacred themes gave way to secular and the Visitation was seldom painted. Elizabeth would have been more than six months’ pregnant with John, and Jesus two months incarnate in Mary’s womb.In other Visitation scenes there is foreshadowing of future sorrows.The master of the Pfarrkirche Altarpiece at Mauer, near Melk (c.Churchmen, however, disapproved and these painted womb babies were banned at the Council of Trent. It is an unusually PVC Door Panel Company feminine scene in the life of Mary.Bump to bump they stand: Mary and her cousin Elizabeth, both pregnant, both apple-cheeked and glowing as expectant mothers should be.1300–1305) and the way Elizabeth clasps Mary’s arms and looks into her eyes.Falling between the artistically more popular scenes of the Annunciation (Angel Gabriel, ray of divine light, holy dove, bashful, slender Virgin) and the Adoration (shepherds, magi, stars, tumbledown stable, ox, ass, newborn baby), the Visitation is less often chosen as a subject. The whispered intimacy of “I’m pregnant!” “Me, too!”Joseph and Zacharias stand sheepish in the background, as men do on such occasions. When Mary greets Elizabeth, the Gospel of St Luke tells us, “The babe leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost: And she spake out with a loud voice, and said, Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.

The wind catches Mary’s draped mantle and blows it behind her.In the Visitation panel of the great limewood sculptor Tilman Riemenschneider’s altarpiece for the Herrgottskirche in Creglingen (c. They fit together like yin and yang segments.In the sculpted Visitation of Reims Cathedral (c.The artists who did choose it invest their Visitations with quiet grace. They are buffeted, but hold hands, quite still in the storm.By arrangement with the Spectator.Later paintings, inspired by growing Marian devotion, show Elizabeth kneeling before Mary.1408), Elizabeth reaches to touch Mary’s swelling stomach, while her own is concave.On the Feast of the Visitation — or the next time a celebrity announces “Twins!” on social media — look at Giotto’s fresco Visitation for the Scrovegni Chapel (c.1310) in gilded robes with rock-crystal cabochons — polished gemstones — set into their stomachs like little peep-windows.1510) even pinched Dürer’s dog snuffling the ground around Elizabeth’s skirts. Zacharias has the look of a man overtaken by events.And what of the boys? Whether we can see them or not, they are the reason for Mary’s journey from Nazareth.1503), the cousins reach to embrace — but their bumps are in the way.One particularly lovely example is Master Heinrich von Konstanz’s walnut wood “The Visitation”(c.In Rembrandt’s Visitation (1640), Elizabeth collapses on Mary, scarcely able to believe she really is pregnant, being so “well stricken” in years.1450), their words become scrolling Latin speech bubbles. Artists couldn’t resist a hierarchy: the bigger the bump, the closer to God.

The baby isn’t his in the conventional sense.In Jacopo da Pontormo’s Visitation fresco for the Church of SS Annunziata in Florence (1514), Mary bends to steady Elizabeth, worried perhaps that she might not be able to get up again.”Elizabeth’s words become part of the “Ave Maria”, and Mary’s words in reply to Elizabeth — “My soul doth magnify the Lord” — the opening to the “Magnificat” hymn. Mary rests her hand protectively on the top of her bump, while Elizabeth covers the lower part with her hand.In the battle of the bumps, though, it is striking how often Mary is winning.In a stained-glass Visitation window from the church of St Peter Mancroft in Norwich (c. Mary and Elizabeth are given little cutaway “ultrasound” panels in their robes and, there, in a mandorla, or a nest of golden rays, we see Jesus giving a benediction and John waving in return as in the illuminated Visitation from a gradual in the Karlsruhe Badische Landesbibliothek (c.1399) has Mary and Elizabeth below a forbidding mountain, a presaging of Calvary, place of Christ’s later crucifixion.Joseph and Zacharias are absent more often than they are present.In the manuscript illumination of the Visitation painted by the Boucicaut Master for the Boucicaut Book of Hours (c.1505–1510), Mary and Elizabeth stand alone on a rocky outcrop.Unlike the synthetic stars and hearts of social media, there is true joy.The Feast of the Visitation is celebrated on 31 May.In Albrecht Dürer’s woodcut

“The Visitation” from The Life of the Virgin (c. It is heartening to remember that bump iconography didn’t begin with Annie Leibovitz. So pleasing was this composition that carvers of limewood sculptures borrowed it for the folding wings of their altarpieces. Melchior Broederlam’s vignette of the Visitation painted on the shutters of the Champol altarpiece (c.1300–1340), or John kneeling with his hands in prayer, as in the courtly Visitation in the Kremsmünster in Austria (1460).The Visitation, the moment of Mary’s visit to Elizabeth in Judea to share the news of her pregnancy, is perhaps the loveliest image in the cycle of devotional paintings known as the Joys of the Virgin.What the women say is as important as their gestures are. Today, the bump images we see most often are the portraits and selfies of pregnant celebrities — from Demi Moore on the cover of Vanity Fair to Beyoncé in her scanties on Instagram. Joseph has more reason than most to feel left out. It is a moment of shared joy