Theological Irregularities

I´ve been looking at religious paintings and sculpture more than is my ususal custom during this trip to Catholic places. Having unearthed that theological irregularity about the Unitarian Visigoths, it´s occurring to me that I have seen evidence of plenty more. Some are subtle, like paintings that show the Virgin Mary with a red garment covered with a blue one, that is, divine on the inside and human on the outside, like the way they color the robes of Jesus. Some reflect a controversy, like the "old" Joseph versus the "young" Joseph. God must be the father of Jesus if Joseph is really old, yes? Then what we to make of the wonderful, happy young Joseph showing off his baby in the Burgos cathedral? There´s the Big Mother thing, and the madonnas from the caves, miraculously discovered at early stages of christianization all over the places I have visited. There is one from Guadalupe(really) in Extramadura, Spain, and like the others, she tends to be dark skinned, with a long, thin face. Who is she?

I am bemused by the view that Mary was so Virginal she didn´t really have her baby the way a normal mother would. There are paintings of her standing, surprised, looking at a baby that seems to have suddenly appeared on the floor in front of her. "Oh, there you are!" (And I remember the drawing from Leonardo´s notebooks showing the angel bringing the annunciation of Mary´s pregnancy in what could euphemistically be called the usual way...)

There´s a really intriguing painting by El Greco of the burial of a nobleman everyone loved, showing two saints having come down from heaven to help him into the grave. Above the scene of the burial, an angel assists a little, pale something into what looks like a birth canal that will allow it (the soul of the deceased, one supposes) to pass into the heavenly realm, pictured with billowing clouds and populated with the usual dignitaries. And among the paintings of heavenly realms, there is indeed variation about who is there and who is highest.

People had different ideas about those old stories during the Middle Ages, even as they do now, and the Powers That Be had their hands full keeping their doctrines straight. So what else old is new?