Titian’s Easter Bunny: A Very Serious Business

The hare represented Jesus and his virgin birth, as the hares were (falsely) believed to reproduce without loss of virginity.

By Massimo Introvigne

April 19, 2025

Titian (Tiziano Vecellio, 1490–1576), “Madonna of the Rabbit” (ca. 1530). Credits.

We are accustomed to regard the Easter Bunny as a character created for children. In fact, that bunnies, or rather hares, hide eggs at Easter for children to find is a tradition attested in Germany since the 17th century.

However, the iconographic connection between the hare and Easter has a much more serious meaning. In Medieval and early modern iconography the hare is in fact a symbol of the virgin birth of Jesus. To understand why it is so we should go back to Roman scholars such as Pliny and Plutarch, widely read in Christian Europe. They believed that hares were hermaphrodites and could reproduce without loss of virginity. The theory was false but had a grain of truth: European brown hares can develop a second pregnancy whilst the previous litter is not delivered yet.

Hares (and by extension rabbits) were thus assumed to represent the virgin birth and associated with the Virgin Mary. But what about Easter? The great German folklorist Jacob Grimm suggested in the 19th century that the hare was an animal sacred to pre-Christian goddess Ostara, or Eostre. Since “Eostre” has a similar sound to “Easter,” Grimm believed that the Christians had incorporated hares into their Easter symbols. However, modern scholars have concluded that Grimm was wrong. Nowhere in ancient sources is Ostara associated with hares or rabbits.

However, we do not really know when the idea that rabbits hide eggs originated. The fact that it is mentioned in writing for the first time in the 17th century does not exclude that it existed before. When one associates the hare and the egg, which is well-known as a symbol of rebirth, the full cycle of Jesus’ mission on Earth appears: from the virgin birth to the resurrection. Of course, hares and rabbits are often confused.

A magnificent example of the Christian symbolism of the hare/rabbit appears in Titian’s “Madonna of the Rabbit,” presently at the Louvre and finished probably in 1530. Here the rabbit is in a position symmetrical to the Christ Child, and declares that his birth has been from a virgin and miraculous. The Christ Child is entrusted by Mary to another woman, Saint Catherine of Alexandria. This is an anachronism, since Catherine was born more than 250 years after Jesus died, but many scholars have seen here an allusion to the fact that Titian’s wife had just died while giving birth to her daughter Lavinia, which was given to the painter’s sister Orsa to be raised.

Master of the Assumption of the Magdalene, “The Assumption of Mary Magdalene” (1506–1507). Photo by Richard Stracke.

It is probable that when he produced his “Madonna of the Rabbit,” Titian was aware of “The Assumption of Mary Magdalene,” painted in 1506–1507 and then in the Church of Saint Andrew of the Eremitani Augustinians in Ferrara. It is now in Ferrara’s Pinacoteca Nazionale. The painter, whose name is unknown, is so much connected to this painting that he is referred to as the “Master of the Assumption of the Magdalene.”

The hare on the lower right corner has been interpreted by some of a symbol of lust and the legend regarding Mary Magdalene as a former prostitute. Indeed, there was a negative Christian symbology of the hare as a lustful animal as well. However, within the context of Mary’s ascension, it is more probable that the hare represents the Christ and his virgin birth.

The Three Hares in St Michael Archangel’s church in Chagford, Devon (from X), left, and in the cloister of Paderborn Cathedral, Germany (credits), right.

We should also mention the mysterious “Three Hares,” which all of a sudden appeared in the Middle Ages in Devon, England, where they are found in seventeen churches, and in Germany. Each hare has an ear in common with the next one, so that there are only three ears for six hares. The symbol also appears in coats of arms and artisans’ trademarks. 

Since the three hares, or rabbits, were depicted on ceramics since the 6th century CE in China, with scholars discussing what they exactly meant, one hypothesis is that they came to Europe through merchants who had seen the Chinese vases along the Silk Road. Others believed the European symbol developed independently. It came to be associated with the hare as a symbol of Jesus and to represent the Trinity.

Source: bitterwinter.org