ABSTRACT
One of the most pervasive images in Western art is mother-and-child; it is also the primary relationship in human development and therefore has been extensively studied by psychoanalysts. The representation of mother and child in art combines style and convention with the psychological insight and experience of a particular artist. In Jan van Eyck's Lucca Madonna, the mother-child unit is even more apparent, because Mary's gaze meets Christ's. The "pictures" on the Susa beaker illustrate the formal differences between arrest and movement. In Giotto's Arena Chapel frescoes the formal qualities of arrest and movement are synthesized with the content, or Iconography, of the scenes. If the riveting power of the gaze in the Nativity and the Presentation is compared with the Flight into Egypt, the significance of Lacan's distinction between arrest and movement is evident. Lacan cites Saint Augustine as a source for his thinking on the death dealing power of the envious gaze.
