The basis of the feast is the evangelical historical fact (Lk 1:39–56), namely the visit that the Blessed Virgin made, after the announcement of the mystery of the Incarnation, to Elizabeth, mother of the Forerunner, with the brief but wonderful scene of the greeting, which concluded with the Magnificat. The divine Mother then remained in the house of her kinswoman for about three months.
The episode entered the official practice of the Roman Church when the liturgy of Advent developed there, that is, from the 6th century onwards: the pericope in question was placed on the Friday of the Advent Ember Days, but only as a preparatory commemoration of Christmas (Th. Klauser, *Das römische Capitulare Evangeliorum*, I, Münster in V. 1935).
On the same Roman date of 2 July, the Greek Church celebrates a Marian feast. According to later traditions, under Emperor Marcian (450–57) the wooden chest in which the body of the Blessed Virgin is said to have been placed after her death would have been brought to Constantinople; this relic was deposited in the church of Blachernae. The liturgical celebration appears under the title *σφόδος τῶν βλαχερνῶν*. But another tradition reduces the same feast to the *κατὰδήγησις*, that is, to the deposition, in the same church under Emperor Leo I in 469, of a garment of the Blessed Virgin, according to the *Metafrastes* as the *maphorion* (= veil), according to Nicephorus Callistus as the *omophorion* (= scapular). Others believe that the “chest” was nothing other than the precious reliquary in which that garment was enclosed. Emperor Constantine VI then gave this garment to Charlemagne, which from then on was displayed at Aachen, especially during the famous *Heiltumsfahrt* that was repeated every nine years. However, Soissons also claims to possess the same garment, brought from Constantinople in 1204, the year of the city’s conquest by the Latins. An attempt has been made to find another basis for the date of 2 July in the Gospel narrative itself. Taking 25 March as the date of the Annunciation, and calculating three months of the Blessed Virgin’s stay with Elizabeth, bearing in mind that the birth of the Baptist falls on 24 June, and judging that the Blessed Virgin was still present on the eighth day when the child was circumcised, she would have departed precisely on 2 July, the day after the octave of St John.
However that may be, at the time of the Crusades the Westerners found in the East a Marian feast on 2 July and brought news of it to the West. It was especially the Friars Minor who spread knowledge of this Marian date. St Bonaventure, Minister General of the Order, at the General Chapter of Pisa in 1263, had the feast of the Visitation introduced throughout the Franciscan Order on 2 July, whence its rapid spread.
Among its most zealous promoters was the powerful Archbishop of Prague, John of Jenstein (1388–96), who composed an Office for imploring Mary’s aid, fixing the feast, for unknown reasons, on 28 April.
Urban VI, after the tragic events of his pontificate, in the Consistory of 8 April 1389, with the cardinals, decreed the introduction of the feast on 2 July, with a fasting vigil and an octave, and also had an Office composed by Cardinal Adam Easton, Bishop of London, in the taste of the time. But he died before he could publish the relevant documents (15 October 1389). His successor Boniface IX took up the idea and, just after his election, published on 9 November 1389 the bull *Superni benignitas conditoris* (Bull. Rom., ed. Turin, IV, pp. 602–604), prescribing the said feast with the rank of a double, a vigil and an octave, and with extensive indulgences. The Council of Basel, in its 43rd session on 19 July 1441, confirmed the bull of Boniface IX (Mansi XXIX, 211–14), but because of the schism part of the Church did not accept the feast. Nevertheless, the Office composed in the name of the Council by Thomas de Corcellis enjoyed a certain diffusion. Instead, at the Ecumenical Council of Florence, under the presidency of Eugenius IV, the Syrian, Maronite and Coptic patriarchates adopted the feast, which they still celebrate on the Roman date.
Nicholas V, with the bull *Romanorum gesta Pontificum* (26 March 1451), republished in full the bull of Boniface IX, with the intention of inducing all particular Churches to accept the feast unanimously (Bull. Rom., ed. Turin, V, pp. 106–107). Sixtus IV, a Franciscan, introduced into the Franciscan liturgical books (1475) a new proper Office with an octave, dedicating his church of Santa Maria della Pace to the mystery of the Visitation. Pius V, in the general reform of the Roman liturgical books, abolished the various Offices and Masses in use for this feast, removed the vigil and the octave, and adopted the Office in the Nativity of Mary, with a few necessary modifications and other readings. From then on the feast had a single date, whereas previously it had been celebrated, for example, at Paris on 27 June, at Reims and Geneva on 8 July, at Prague and Ratisbon on 28 June, at Avranches on 1 April, at York on 2 April, etc. Finally, Clement VIII, in the new reform of the liturgical books (1602), elevating the feast to the new rank of a major double introduced by him, had the Office of the Visitation revised by the Minim Father Ruiz; proper antiphons and responsories were then added, lessons were shifted and introduced, and after this the Office took the form it still retains. Pius IX, after the period of the Roman Republic, which ended precisely on 2 July 1849, elevated the feast to the rank of a double feast of the second class, which it still holds (decree *Quam Sanctissimus*, 31 May 1850).
ART. – The earliest known depiction of the Visitation is found in an ivory panel of the throne of Bishop Maximian at Ravenna (6th century). The sacred scene is depicted there without the ample drapery of the Virgin and St Elizabeth, which is traditional today, but which appears instead in a miniature from the book of homilies of the Greek monk James, of the 11th century, now in the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris.
In the 12th century the type of the very simple scene with the two ladies was already fixed, as can be seen in a marble relief in the Bishop’s Palace at Fano, in a bronze panel of the side door of the cathedral of Pisa, a work by Bonanno datable around 1180, and in the Paschal candlestick of the cathedral of Gaeta, where an angel attends the sacred scene. The same scheme is followed in the Visitation painted among the side scenes of the paliotto of San Giovanni, a work of Byzantine influence from the first two decades of the 13th century, preserved in the Gallery in Siena.
Late medieval depictions occasionally include two handmaids standing behind the Virgin and Saint Elizabeth respectively. The earliest known representation occurs on an ivory panel of the episcopal chair in Fano, on a bronze panel of the side door of Pisa cathedral by Bonanno (c. 1180), and on the Easter candelabrum of Gaeta cathedral, where an angel attends the sacred scene. The same arrangement appears in the Virgin painted between the side scenes of the altarpiece of Saint John, a work of Byzantine influence from the first two decades of the 13th century, now in the Siena Gallery.
In some 14th-century Florentine depictions only the Virgin’s handmaid appears. Andrea da Pontedera followed this scheme in a bronze panel of the Florentine Baptistery door, cast in 1336, and Taddeo Gaddi in a painted panel c. 1340, now in the Accademia Museum in Florence. Fra Angelico around 1440 in the predella of the Annunciation at Cortona and in that of the Annunciation at Montecarlo near San Giovanni Valdarno reverted to the two-handmaid scheme; his pupil Zenobi Strozzi did the same in the predella of the Annunciation, now in the Prado, Madrid. Late Gothic art north of the Alps omitted the handmaids entirely, as in a 15th-century Swabian master’s panel in the Civic Museum of Vipiteno and in Rogier van der Weyden’s panel in the Turin Museum.
The Renaissance introduced changes to the scene, beginning with the posture of Saint Elizabeth, who is often shown kneeling before the Virgin: for example in a glazed terracotta by the Della Robbia school on an altar at Pistoia, and in Domenico Ghirlandaio’s painting of 1491 (Louvre, Paris), where two handmaids are still present. By c. 1500, however, they are replaced by an elaborate retinue. A fresco by Ghirlandaio (c. 1490) in the main chapel of Santa Maria Novella in Florence foreshadows this arrangement. In Pinturicchio’s fresco in the Borgia Apartments, completed in 1497, the Virgin is accompanied by Saint Joseph, as also in the stained-glass window by Guillaume de Marcillat in the choir of Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome. In the Visitation attributed to Andrea del Sarto (Galleria Spada, Rome) the scene is set in a public square, as it is in Vittore Carpaccio’s panel in the Venice Museum. Pontormo in his fresco of 1516 in the cloister of the Santissima Annunziata in Florence, and Sodoma in his fresco c. 1530 in the Oratory of San Bernardo in Siena, transformed the Visitation into a grand courtly ceremony, a style later adopted about the mid-16th century by Francesco Salviati in his fresco in the Oratory of San Giovanni Decollato in Rome. A concise medieval composition is recalled, however, in the work of the Florentine Mariotto Albertinelli, now in the Uffizi and painted in 1503. A revival of this model, with an Annunciation scene in the foreground, was executed a few years later by the Sienese Girolamo del Pacchia, now in the Siena Gallery. The same gallery preserves a fine Visitation by Giacomo Pacchiarotti in which the scene unfolds against the backdrop of a magnificent Roman arch in perspective, attended by six saints grouped at the sides. Pacchiarotti is also represented in the Siena Gallery by another Visitation, with two handmaids, painted on the central panel of a triptych where Saint Joachim stands beside Saint Elizabeth.
Late 16th-century depictions of the Visitation sometimes convey a poignant intimacy: noteworthy is Barocci’s altarpiece in the Chiesa Nuova in Rome. A delicate 17th-century genre scene is the Visitation in a painting in the Borghese Gallery, long attributed to Peter Paul Rubens (c. 1630) but now considered by his pupil Martin Mandreken. — See pl. CL.