According to Ean Begg, the world’s foremost expert on Black Madonnas, Our Lady of Dublin is Ireland’s only example of this mysterious and powerful tradition. Carved from oak in the late 14th or early 15th century, the statue portrays Mary tenderly holding the Christ Child and is today enshrined in Whitefriar Street Carmelite Church. Her darkened features, shaped by both age and devotion, place her firmly in the lineage of Europe’s Black Madonnas—figures revered for their depth, mystery, and maternal strength. Believed to be Ireland’s sole representative of this sacred tradition, Our Lady of Dublin was lost for centuries before resurfacing in a second-hand shop and finding her home in Whitefriar Street. Yet even this poignant survival story is not the whole picture—for my research now shows that Ireland is home not to one, but to three Black Madonnas.

Almost entirely unknown in Ireland until now, Our Lady of Thomastown is Ireland’s second Black Madonna—a hidden figure of the late 16th or early 17th century whose full story I have traced for the first time. Brought from Spain and modelled on the ancient Virgin of Charity of Illescas (Toledo), she belongs to a lineage of Madonnas whose origins reach back to the earliest days of Christianity. According to tradition, the Illescas Madonna—originally black—was carved by St Luke himself and carried to Spain by St Peter around AD 50–60. Like Poland’s famed Our Lady of Czestochowa, she embodies that mysterious strand of Marian devotion where darkness is not absence but depth, not shadow but power. To discover her presence in Thomastown is to realise that Ireland, long called the land of the Goddess, holds in trust yet another image of the divine feminine—hidden in plain sight until now.

Hidden in plain sight, Our Lady of Waterford is Ireland’s third Black Madonna—a rare 14th-century figure and one of the few surviving native Irish medieval statues. I first encountered her during my internship for my MA in Public History and Cultural Heritage with the University of Limerick at Waterford Medieval Museum, tucked quietly within the museum’s Medieval Collection, as if awaiting rediscovery. Unlike her continental counterparts, she emerges directly from Ireland’s own sacred tradition, her darkened visage radiating the solemn, nurturing power of the nursing Madonna. To see her today is to witness a remarkable survival of Ireland’s medieval devotional art, a quiet guardian of centuries of faith, preserved for visitors to encounter within Waterford Treasures’ Medieval Museum Collection.