Dostoevsky's Madonna

The Madonna is a symbol of beauty in the image of Christ which man has trouble understanding. In Two Kinds of Beauty, by Robert Louis Jackson, the author describes sensuality as “the ideal of Sodom” as opposed to “the ideal of Madonna” which Dmitry speaks about in Brothers Karamazov. The higher aesthetic beauty which could be compared to Madonna is what man strives for; beauty that is pleasing because it offers harmony and it is eternal. It is man’s inner struggle that he finds beauty in sin, sensuality, and the ugly. In The Devils, none of the novel’s characters sees Raphael’s painting with ease, the painting of the Madonna is hard to understand for those who see beauty in aesthetic symmetry and those who see beauty in ugliness and sensuality. “In The Devils those who attack the Sistine Madonna are just as incapable of seeing it clearly, free of mediation by higher authorities, as those who worship it.” Neither the supporters nor the attackers of the Sistine Madonna display much spiritual connection to it in relation to Jesus Christ, but near the end of the novel, with the appearance of Maria Shatova, the Sistine Madonna comes to life before the reader’s eyes and recovers the divine power that Pushkin hailed in the Apollo Belvedere.

References:

Fusso, S. Maidens in Childbirth: The Sistine Madonna in Dostoevskii’s Devils. Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian studies. Slavic Review. Vol. 54, No. 2 pp. 261-275, 1995.

Jackson, L. R. Two Kinds of Beauty