Proceedings Of The Virgin (Madonna Laboris)

Proceedings Of The Virgin (Madonna Laboris) by Nicholas Roerich is his very famous painting. Sold for £7,881,250 (INR 684,240,477)   Throughout his artistic career Nicholas Roerich was drawn repeatedly to depict female imagery, the theme he termed The Mother of the World. During his numerous trips to India, China, Tibet and Mongolia, Roerich completed a series of works in which he created a 'synthesis of the iconographic representations' of the Virgin, in particular such paintings as Queen of Heaven (1931), Madonna Laboris (1931, 1934, 1936), Madonna Oriflamma (1932), a triptych dedicated to Joan of Arc (1931), Madonna the Protector (1933), and She who Holds the World (1937). These symbolic images of the Mother figure combine representations of the Virgin from ancient Russian and Byzantine art, Western Europe. Madonnas, and Eastern Goddesses and Bodhisattvas.   Nicholas and Helena Roerich, brought up in the Russian Orthodox Christian tradition, expanded their horizons by studying both the contemporary Hindu teachings of Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda as well as Buddhism and Helena Blavatsky's Theosophy. This knowledge provided the foundation for Helena Roerich's writing on Agni Yoga, which emphasized the feminine principle in modern spirituality and informed Nicholas's depiction of prototypes. (Kenneth Archer, Roerich: East and West, Parkstone Press, England, 1999, p.157). Helena Roerich describes the Mother of the World as 'the Great Spirit of the Feminine Principle'. For Nicholas Roerich, the Mother of the World was the highest symbol of world unity, the most universal of all the great teachers (Mark L. Prophet, The Masters and Their Retreats, Summit University Press, 2003, p.236). The obvious need for a unifying symbol for the new Theosophical system led Roerich to paint the 'Mother of the World'.

Nicholas Roerich known also as Nikolai Konstantinovich Rerikh– was a Russian painter, writer, archaeologist, theosophist, perceived by some in Russia as an enlightener, philosopher, and public figure, who in his youth was influenced by a movement in Russian society around the spiritual.   Nicholas was interested in hypnosis and other spiritual practices and his paintings are said to have hypnotic expression. Born in Saint Petersburg, Russia, to a well-to-do notary public father of Baltic German ancestry and a Russian mother, he lived in various places around the world until his death in Naggar, Himachal Pradesh, India. Trained as an artist and a lawyer, his main interests were literature, philosophy, archaeology, and especially art.   Roerich was a dedicated activist for the cause of preserving art and architecture during times of war. He earned several nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize long list. The so-called Roerich Pact was signed into law by the United States and most nations of the Pan-American Union in April 1935.