Mine’s not really an image in art that I’ve seen. My favorite image of Our Lady is one I “saw” while on a vocation retreat. One of the exercises was to be given a title of Our Lady and then to present our contemplation and how it was speaking to us on the retreat. I got “Our Lady Seat of Wisdom” on my slip of paper. I had no clue about the title and with no Internet no access to outside resources. So I just threw up my figurative hands and said, “Lord and my mother, I have no clue what this means. It’s supposed to be meaning something to me during this retreat. A bit of help even figuring out what this is would be great.”
I immediately had an image in my mind of Our Lady, seated on a chair, with an infant Jesus in her lap. Unlike most images where Jesus is facing outward, instead he had all his attention on his mother. Scattered around the chair and in her lap such that you could barely see the floor were various writings from different times (cloth, scrolls, bound books, etc.) with Jesus pointing with his right hand down to the writings and his left up at her and she was just so rapt with her attention on her son as he taught her. After I got past my initial “DON’T SCATTER ALL THE WRITING ALL OVER THE FLOOR!!” response, I also got a “huh, I guess she’s the literal seat of wisdom in this instance.” I thanked both of them and told them I wouldn’t overthink things in the future.
I still have that little slip of paper with that title tucked away in my rosary case. Whenever I think of our mother, that’s the image that I have. I’ve looked around to see if the image I had was of a painting that I just hadn’t realized I’d seen before, but I can’t find anything like it yet.