Angelic music in Marian iconography. A visual discourse about the hope of salvation

This article aims to provide an in-depth study of the meaning of angelic music in Marian iconography. In what are called apocryphal gospels, the canticles of the angels are associated for the first time in the history of Christ and his mother, Mary, appearing thus in the key moments of the history of human salvation. The first representations alluding to this question arise in the ecclesiastical intellectual elite, but in the early Middle Ages, with the diffusion of hagiographic literature and the increase in Marian worship, the music of the angels comes to form part of the shared imaginary world. During the Renaissance period this salvational meaning becomes even more intense, new variants emerging more in line with the devotional interests of the time.