USPS Releases New Madonna and Child Christmas Forever Stamp Featuring 16th-Century Painting
The U.S. Postal Service has released a new Christmas Forever stamp featuring a richly detailed Madonna and Child painting created around the year 1500. The stamp uses an image from “The Virgin and Child Enthroned,” an oil-on-panel painting in the collection of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts. The work centers on the Virgin Mary dressed in vivid red garments with the Christ child seated in her lap, surrounded by an unusually elaborate background filled with religious symbolism and small narrative details.
USPS art director Greg Breeding said the painting caught his attention because of the red folds in Mary’s dress, the unusual background and the ornate patterns surrounding her head. Mary’s clothing is decorated with gold and jewels, while a pearl-covered jeweled band appears on her head. The Christ child is dressed in white and rests one hand on a decorated book of hours, a collection of prayers associated with different times of day.
The background adds much of the detail that makes the image distinctive. A brocade textile woven with gold and silver threads appears behind Mary, while angels can be seen to one side. On the other, two small figures stand at a rampart looking toward a Dutch city and scenes of daily life, with the heavenly Jerusalem visible farther in the distance. At Mary’s feet is a foliage-filled area believed to represent a walled garden.
The painting also contains a number of documented Christian symbols. The Christ child wears a necklace with a red carbuncle associated with martyrdom and a pearl symbolizing salvation, while pomegranates in the background suggest fertility and resurrection. Other details identified by the Clark Art Institute include a small dog representing faith, plantains along the road to salvation, strawberries symbolizing righteousness and good works, and the walled garden as a symbol of Mary’s virginity.
The release continues a long-running USPS tradition of using Madonna and Child artwork on Christmas postage. The first U.S. Madonna and Child Christmas stamp appeared in 1966, four years after the Postal Service introduced its first Christmas stamp. Similar religious designs appeared nearly every year through 2009, with occasional changes to other traditional Christmas imagery such as angels and Nativity scenes.
USPS printed 185 million of the new Christmas stamps, which are being sold in booklets of 20. Because they are Forever stamps, they will remain valid for the current First-Class Mail 1-ounce rate regardless of future postage increases. The stamps are available through Post Office locations nationwide, the Postal Store, USA Philatelic and other USPS sales channels.