I’m well aware of the difference between
the Virgin Birth and the Immaculate Conception,
and I know her son ascended (active voice) into heaven
whereas she was merely assumed (passive voice),
so how could I have missed her coronation?
Here, in Bruyn the Elder’s triptych version,
everyone is frozen in their places,
as if they were refrigerated in time,
and instead of looking out at us,
mere mortals in a gallery on a rainy afternoon,
Mary’s eyes are lowered, tresses
flowing over her shoulders.
A tall Christ is holding the crown overhead,
his bearded Father lending a hand,
and the Paraclete, who I called the parakeet
as a child, hovers enshrined in a wafer.
Is Mary being rewarded for having to watch
her son being nailed to a cross on the ground
then raised—oh, the pain of that—
only to bleed out on the top of a hill.
Or was there just the need to dress her up?
I mean we can’t have the Mother of God
padding through the clouds in her sandals
wearing the same thing she wore at the Annunciation,
which, it must be said, took her wholly by surprise.
So here she is, going royal in a dark blue robe,
maybe sewn by angels, about to be crowned
much like Elizabeth I and that other Mary,
Queen of Scots. The very word coronation
makes me expect the Duke of Edinburgh
to show up in a side panel, dressed for the hunt.
But this tableau is only for divinities,
attended by a rank of winged angels,
yet no rosy toddlers float about
in the painted sky, as blue and clear as yesterday’s
here on earth, home of the same trees,
hillsides, and mountains featured in this painting
and everything I am surveying out this window—
the waving palms, trumpeting hibiscus,
and the pale blue rectangle of a swimming pool.
It’s a sight not seen anywhere in the New Testament
or in any artistic rendering of heaven,
though I can easily picture those two butterflies
wheeling about in the perfumed air of paradise,
each one wearing his or her miniature golden crown.