Virgin Mary baby Jesus statue

The pairing of Virgin and Child is the foundational devotional image of Christianity — there is no Madonna without her Son, and no Christ in art before the world had seen him as a child in his mother's arms. The Greek term Theotokos, "God-bearer", was formally established at the Council of Ephesus in AD 431 and remains the deepest theological claim ever made about the relationship of any human being to the divine.