Look into My Eyes: A Communication-Oriented Analysis of the Madonna del Mare Nostrum

Dutch painter Hans Versteeg’s Madonna del Mare Nostrum (2017) depicts a woman and child wrapped in thermal blankets, seemingly just rescued from the sea. Its composition draws from Christian iconography, particularly Eastern Orthodox icons and Western Madonna-and-Child symbolism, recontextualizing these traditions by applying them to the contemporary, interrelated refugee and climate crises. Through a communication-oriented analysis, the author argues that this painting is an illustrative example of the cultural persistence of the Christian narrative complex in secularized contemporary Western society.