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 Basilica of Notre-Dame du Port is a Romanesque basilica, formerly a collegiate church, in the Port quarter of Clermont-Ferrand, between Place Delille and the cathedral. From the 10th century to the French Revolution it was served by a community of canons, regular until the 13th century, and thereafter secular. According to tradition, the church was founded by the bishop of Clermont, Saint Avitus, in the 6th century and was rebuilt in the 11th or 12th centuries after being burned down by the Normans. The establishment here of a community of canons took place no earlier than the middle of the 10th century, under bishop Étienne II of Clermont. The church was formally declared a basilica minor on 3 May 1886. The name "du Port" supposedly comes from the fact that the church was built in the "port" district, in Latin portus, here in the sense of "market" rather than "seaport". It should be noted however that the church at first bore the name of Sainte-Marie-Principale; the description Portus or du Port is not known before the 11th century. Nor was the Port district, at least in the Middle Ages, a particularly commercial one: the districts of Saint-Pierre and Saint-Genès were much more so.

According to Ean Begg, two famous statues of the Virgin, probably both black Madonnas, have been venerated at the basilica since at least the 14th century, one on the high altar and one in the crypt. The principal cult is focussed on the crypt, site of an ancient holy well, and the image there is described as an 'oriental' Vierge de Tendresse (Virgin of Tenderness). The statue was saved by two women during the French Revolution and later re-instated. It was stolen in 1864 but apparently wept so inconsolably that the remorseful thief returned it in 1873. The statue was temporarily housed in the cathedral during the 2007/8 restoration of the basilica and its return on 7th December 2008, the Vigil of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, marked the re-opening of the basilica to the public.