Photo of Mater, in the chapel of the Madalena Sofia College, in Curitiba - PR (Brazil)
In one of the corridors of the Trinità dei Monti.
Pauline Pedrau, postulant,
painted a fresco of Mary as an adolescent.
The Virgin is seated on a portico of the Temple of Jerusalem,
alone, with her back to the plain.
She squints her eyelids and contemplates
the essential invisible to the eyes;
her hands rest in her lap,
holding a forgotten book;
on the right side, a lily; on the left, the spinning wheel;
at her feet a book in a sewing basket.
From an artistic point of view, it is not a perfect image:
this book, bound, is evidently anachronistic;
this alluvial plain, more Roman than Palestinian;
and no seamstress will know how to sew
this complicated mantle that envelops Mary.
Nevertheless, such a freshness of innocence and tranquility
emerges from the whole,
that students flee to contemplate her:
"She is the only Madonna of our age".
From the book: Under the sign of fire - M. Thereza Latgé RSCJ, Brazil