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.

According to legend, the Virgin of Nuria was carved by the hermit St Giles at the beginning of the 8th century and hidden in a cave to protect it from the conquering Moors, at Nuria in the Spanish Pyrenes. Along with the image of the Virgin, he left a pot used for cooking, a cross, and a bell for calling shepherds to meals. In the 11th century, a pilgrim from Damascus called Amadeus was directed to Nuria by the Vrgin in a dream and built a chapel there. The image and its accoutrements were discovered seven years later after a bull was seen pawing at the spot where they were hidden. Later attempts to move the Virgin were abandoned when the statue became preternaurally heavy until it was returned to its chosen sanctuary. Other wonders followed and the shrine became an important pilgrimage site, especially resorted to by infertile couples who participated in rituals featuring the bell and the cauldron.

The current statue is thought to date from the 12th or 13th centuries and, until a modern restoration, was a black Madonna. During the Spanish Civil War the shrine was supressed but the statue was spirited away by devotees and deposited in a Swiss bank until the end of hostilities allowed the resumption of the pilgrimage. Our Lady of Nuria recieved a canonical coronation in 1965 and her feast is kept every 8th September (the Nativity of the Virgin) when she is carried in procession from the church to the cave of St Giles where she was discovered.