Artwork above: Leeper, Nicholas. Madonna and Child (Pietà). 2025. Acrylic, Ink, and Gold Leaf on Linen Panel. 18 x 18 inches
In “Madonna and Child (Pietà),” a woman hugs a bright red box of Tide as if cradling something sacred. The image contains visual contradiction: a Ben-Day-dotted, mid-century housewife gazes heavenward, enveloped in a gilded background reminiscent of Byzantine icons. Her pose, despite her expression, evokes the tenderness of a “Descent from the Cross,” yet the object in her arms is not the crucified Christ, but a mass-produced laundry detergent container. Her gesture is not familiar in other works of the same name, such as Michelangelo’s, where Mary is downcast and mourning, holding the dead body of Jesus. And yet, the scene is recognizable from advertisements in the 20th century: a proud mother snuggling her sanitary solution to chores. The piece is both comic and reverent, absurd and prayerful. In this collision of sacred and commercial motifs in what I call Pop Iconography, I attempt to render the holy visible through everyday materials.
Mary and Jesus do not look like what we expect; instead, their depictions reveal something else about them.
This painting is part of an ongoing series, “What Do You Say That I Am?,” that investigates Christ’s representation metaphorically through things rather than superficially through direct resemblance. Inspired by Jesus’ question, “Who do you say that I am?” (Matthew 16:15), the series reimagines the Madonna and Child trope for a consumerist age. In this piece, Christ is not just an object, but a brand. “Tide,” the box reads in large retro letters, circled by a target of magenta and gold rings. And on the rings above the logo reads: “a new washing miracle.” The iconographic halo traditionally reserved for saints now encompasses the detergent box and the woman. The inscriptions ΜΡ ΘΥ (Mother of God) and ΙϹ ΧϹ (Jesus Christ) hover near their symbolic referents, as they would in a classical icon. Yet the referents themselves are dissonant. Mary and Jesus do not look like what we expect; instead, their depictions reveal something else about them.
I often draw upon the work of Pseudo-Dionysius in his “The Divine Names,” where he writes that God is best known through “dissimilar similarities,” or “dissemblance,” as opposed to resemblance. Because God is ineffable and totally other, no image can accurately resemble the divine. And so, our only means is to dissemble the divine with images that, by their very contradiction, point beyond themselves toward a greater, unempirical truth. The medieval tradition of negative theology, or the via negativa, teaches us that God is not this, nor that. Not even our most beautiful images or sacred icons can fully capture the divine. Instead, these images point toward the divine through a sort of visual dialectic, a clash of ideas that produces a new insight.
Although detergent is not Christ, nor is Christ detergent, through this bizarre pairing, we can access a more profound truth about who Christ is by identifying the similarities between the two. Christians believe in a savior who “cleanses us from all sin,” (1 John 1:7) who “washes us white as snow” (Isaiah 1:18, Psalm 51:7). And the one who is to come “will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap.” (Malachi 3:2). The theology of rinsing is already there in the language of Scripture.
His (Jesus’) sacrifice on the cross is like the disappearing act of laundry detergent: one that works through contact with filth, through mess and with water.
Additionally, soap vanishes as it works. It disappears in the process of cleansing others. It suffers a sort of self-sacrifice, in which it transfigures into something beyond itself by dissolution. This vanishing act evokes Christ, who “emptied himself, taking the form of a servant” (Philippians 2:7). Not only does Christ come to purify us and make us clean, but in doing so, he undergoes a kenosis, an emptying out, much like soap does in the wash. Through dissolving, all the clothes are clean. His sacrifice on the cross is like the disappearing act of laundry detergent: one that works through contact with filth, through mess and with water. A theology of Incarnation, atonement, resurrection and baptism (at least) is smuggled into a box of Tide.
In traditional images of the pietà, Christ is often shown with his gory corpse upon the lap of his wailing mother. However, in this artwork, the woman holds him with great joy because he is empty, having fulfilled his purpose, which is indeed good news. She is the one who pitches the symbolic Christ. Instead of selling us something, she challenges us to see what is already here: the divine in the disposable. She is the agent who made Christ’s action in the world possible through her response to the angel Gabriel at the Annunciation. She is the one who has said “yes.” And she advertises how good life can be when we make a similar response in our own lives to Christ. And she is a model for all the faithful to mediate Christ’s presence in the world and bring about his cleansing power.
If God can be found in all things, this must also mean even in the laundry detergent we buy at the store and use at home.
In the Ignatian tradition, we seek to “find God in all things,” which means looking for God in every circumstance of life, not just in explicitly religious settings or activities. If God can be found in all things, this must also mean even in the laundry detergent we buy at the store and use at home. God often works through the absurd, even the scandalous. As St. Paul writes in his first letter to the Corinthians, “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Corinthians 1:18). The earliest Christians were mocked for worshiping a crucified criminal or persecuted for holding that God became a human being. Pop Icons preserve some of that foolishness, that scandal, to awaken us to the reality of the Christian message. The cross is ridiculous and scandalous! Christ as Tide is the same. Yet, neither is a joke nor blasphemy. It’s how we perceive and engage with something that can transform it into a carrier of God’s grace.
Art, especially religious icons, is not just a collection of pretty pictures for our viewing pleasure. Icons are invitations. They invite conversation. In Friedrich Nietzsche’s “The Birth of Tragedy,” art needs to be more Dionysian rather than Apollonian. The Dionysian requires audience participation for divine re-presentation. The Apollonian is an art that attempts to represent the supernatural without encounter. In the past, and in some communities to this day, Dionysian engagement remains centered on icons, especially. The faithful bow, touch, kiss and then converse with the icon, not as an object in itself, but with whom the object represents to them in their imagination. The icon is much like a telephone. A telephone is not the conversation itself, but a means to having one.
Something secular becomes sacramental. A box of detergent becomes a religious icon. And our world becomes a little bit more charged with the grandeur of God.
In Ignatian spirituality, conversation is deeply important. At the end of one’s prayer, St. Ignatius of Loyola often invites the participant to have a colloquy with Mary, Jesus and the Father. Conversation with God is necessary for spiritual growth, as it’s through this that we come to know Jesus more personally. It’s through this that we recognize that we are loved. And my goal is to help people continue to have that conversation with God, not just with Pop Icons, but also with the commodities used to represent Christ.
We do not live in a Christian visual culture any longer. Statues of saints and religious images have been replaced with advertising and branding. We can lament this fact, but I hope that after seeing this pietà, God becomes more present in one’s life through dissemblance. We don’t need to change the culture; we need to change our own ideas of what is religious. When one goes to the grocery store and sees Tide on the shelves, perhaps that can now be a moment of divine encounter. Maybe buying laundry detergent and using it at home regularly becomes an invitation to remember God and start a conversation. Something secular becomes sacramental. A box of detergent becomes a religious icon. And our world becomes a little bit more charged with the grandeur of God.