Behind the hustle and bustle of Prague’s shopping district, just off the Fruit Market (Ovocny Trh), the House of the Black Madonna stands watch at the junction of the market and Celetna street where tourists are always ambling by.

The building houses the museum of Czech Cubism and was constructed just before World War I by local architect Josef Gocar. The previous building belonged to the Granovsky Knights (Who are these knights? Please leave a comment if you know anything about them as I cannot seem to find any information) and already contained the statue of the Black Madonna that you can see embedded in the Celetna side of the building.

This statue is notable mainly because a black effigy of the Catholic Virgin Mary is rare – there are only about 500 of them in the whole of Europe.

Some claim that the statue is black because that was the colour of the wood used, or because of soot deposits from votive candles. However, these are not satisfactory explanations and if you keep in mind the fact that the Catholic Church replaced ancient faiths in Europe (like the Mithraic cult in Rome), there may be an underlying importance to these statues that is lost to us.

It is interesting to note that a passage in the Roman Catholic Bible from the Song of Songs (1:5) reads

‘I am as dark-but lovely,
O daughters of Jerusalem –
As the tents of Kedar,
as the curtains of Salma.’

(Ref: The Vatican Archive)

The stanza reproduced here is sung by a bride and the suggestion is that being black is also to be considered beautiful. This book was probably influenced by Greek, Egyptian and Mesopotamian love-poetry.

The Egyptian Mother-Goddess cult of Isis is often portrayed as bearing her son Horus in her arms; it is reasonable to expect that similar cults would have portrayed their feminine deity in the same way. Such figures were revered as symbols of fertility, gestation, procreation and renewal of life. As the Catholic religion established itself, it would have been natural to adopt similar symbols and this may explain part of this.

There’s Isis-influenced imagery in St Gabriel’s church in Prague’s Smichov district.

I was quite happy with my research up till this point but then I discovered that the provenance of many statues of Black Madonnas is medieval which suggests that any reference to pre-Catholic times falls flat on its face.

So what is the significance of such a statue?

And why do they exist?

Ponder this mystery, if you will, as you note the Black Madonna at Celetna 43 in Prague on your way to the Powder Tower.