In art historical terms, a black Madonna is a painting or sculpture depicting the Virgin Mary with dark or black skin, created in Europe in the late medieval period, or sometimes an older image whose documented popular cult dates from that time. Some are made of dark or black materials such as ebony, others are said to have become blackened from the soot of candles, although this explanation and the significance of the Madonna’s skin colour is contested. There are several hundred black Madonnas in Europe. The topic of black Madonnas has attracted a considerable literature in recent decades approaching the subject from the perspectives of anthropology, psychology, art history, feminism, and Black history.

The Virgin Mary has been venerated a Le Puy-en-Velay since at least the 4th century. According to legend the Virgin appeared to a woman suffering from a fever and told her to lie down on the great stone at the summit of the mountain there, whereupon she was healed. The cure was recognised by the bishop who visited the site and witnessed for himself another miracle: a sudden fall of snow during July, followed by the appearance of a stag which ran around the stone tracing the outline of the basilica which was to be built in honour of the Virgin. The bishop planted thorn bushes around the outline to preserve it after the snow should melt and returned the next day to find them miraculously in full bloom. On completion, the basilica was miraculously consecrated by angels - hence the title Église Angélique.

The shrine's illustrious pilgrims over the centuries have included the Emperor Charlemagne, fifteen kings of France, five popes, and numerous saints including Joan of Arc, Dominic de Guzmán, and Anthony of Padua. As well as being a pilgrimage destination itself, Le Puy is one of the traditional points of departure on the Camino to Santiago di Compostella. Every year that Good Friday coincides with the feast of the Annunciation (25th March) a great jubilee is held; the last two were in 2005 and 2016 but the next will not be until 2157. The famous Black Madonna venerated there was reputedly given by St Louis and was said to have been made either by the prophet Jeremiah or by an Ethiopian monk of the same name. It was destroyed after the French Revolution and the current statue is a (likely quite accurate) copy made from 18th-century drawings of the original after the pilgrimage was revived in the 19th century. This holy card, published at the end of the 19th century or early in the 20th, would have been sold to pilgrims as a souvenir of the shrine.