My series on Marian art for the month of May from the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection comes to end this Sunday with a depiction in ceramics of an image of Mary from Mexico that has found particular favor among Roman Catholics around the globe: the Virgin of Guadalupe. According to tradition, the Virgin appeared to the Aztec peasant, Juan Diego, on December 1531 atop a hill in what is now northern Mexico City, leaving behind her sacred image on a cloak, which can be seen in a basilica specially built on the site. Mexican Potter Juana Ponce reproduces this Marian vision in clay, showing the Virgin in a star-spangled blue robe, astride a crescent moon held up by an angel. Ponce makes pottery pieces in the Talavara style she learned from her father, creating hand-painted, highly glazed earthenware objects that are variations on the Majolica pottery brought to the New World by European artisans in the 16th century. Ponce's Virgin of Guadalupe can now be viewed on the Mexican Figurative Pottery page in the Schools of Sacred Art section. (John Kohan)