Painted in 1866 by Carl Bloch, this is perhaps our favorite Visitation painting. We like the crisp style, the strong colors, the clear theme. Mary has come to Elizabeth's, who is coming down the stairs to her. It has a symbolic value of the old rite coming down to the new, which is ascending.

Carl Heinrich Bloch (1834-1890) was a religious painter from Denmark. Enormously popular in his day, his paintings are mostly Bible scenes. You have probably seen some before, like his Gethsemane painting with the ministering angel next to Jesus, or his Resurrection paining which we carry as a postcard. He had the dramatic style, like William-Adolphe Bouguereau, that was developed in the 19th Century and is the forerunner of the great illustrators that followed in the decades after.

Because this style is so clear and direct, conveying so much of the meaning and emotion of the stories, it is useful in catechistical ways. The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints likes Bloch very much for this reason, although they have to cut out the Catholic elements of Bloch's paintings, such as the wings on the angels. Bloch himself was a devout Lutheran, but almost all the Protestant artistic themes are Catholic anyway, and especially since the Visitation is the Second Joyful Mystery of the Rosary, we have included it as a beautiful representation of an important feature of Catholic culture. Many Catholic websites include this picture for the same reason, and Catholic Digest has a nice article on this picture and its theological implications you might enjoy reading.

** IMPORTANT ** THE IMAGE IS SMALLER THAN THE PAPER! There is a blank border around the image. Approximately 0.5" wide for 5x7, 1.3" for 8.5x11, 1.6" for 11x14, and 1.75" for 13x17 and 16x20. For the two poster sizes, 18x24 and 24x36, we use 0.5" borders. We do this because the ratio of the rectangle of the art almost never matches the rectangle of the paper, and if it did happen to match one size, it would not match the others. Most fine art printers do this because otherwise they’d have to crop the art or warp it to make it fit the paper. The border looks good. It gives the picture a faux matted appearance.
There is almost always a little more border either on the left-right sides, or the top-bottom, depending on whether the ratio of the art is wider or taller than the paper.

We make Archival Quality fine art prints:
– Acid-free paper
– Archival pigments
– Cardboard backer for sizes 11x14 and less.
– Above story of the art
– Enclosed in a tight-fitting, crystal-clear bag.
– Rated to last 200+ years without fading if kept dry and out of the direct sun.

Thanks for your interest!

+JMJ+
Sue & John
Lincoln, Nebraska



“In order to communicate the message entrusted to her by Christ, the Church needs art.”
~ St. Pope John Paul II

Original image is out-of-copyright. Descriptive text and any image alterations (hence the whole new image) © by Sue Kouma Johnson – Classic Catholic Art.