What is "madonna"

Madonna \Ma*don"na\, n. [It. madonna my lady. See Dame, Donna, and cf. Madame, Monkey.]

1. My lady; -- a term of address in Italian formerly used as the equivalent of Madame, but for which Signora is now substituted. Sometimes introduced into English.
   --Shak.

2. [pl. Madonnas (n[.a]z).] A picture of the Virgin Mary (usually with the babe).

   The Italian painters are noted for drawing the Madonnas by their own wives or mistresses.
   --Rymer.

1580s, "Italian lady," from Italian madonna, from Old Italian ma donna (Italian mia donna) "my lady," from ma "my" + donna "lady," from Latin domina (see dame). Sense of "picture or statue of the Virgin Mary" is from 1640s. The U.S. singer/dancer (full name Madonna Louise Ciccone, b.1958) attained to pop stardom in fall 1984.

n. (context skateboarding English) A one-footed lien to tail trick, where the front foot is taken off and kicked out straight down behind the board.

Madonna (from medieval Italian , meaning "my lady") most commonly refers to:

• Madonna, a title for Mary, mother of Jesus, a religious figure in Christianity and Islam
• Madonna (entertainer) (born 1958), American singer-songwriter and producer

Madonna may also refer to:

Madonna Louise Ciccone (born August 16, 1958) is an American singer, songwriter, dancer, actress, and businesswoman. She achieved popularity by pushing the boundaries of lyrical content in mainstream popular music and imagery in her music videos, which became a fixture on MTV. Madonna is known for reinventing both her music and image, and for maintaining her autonomy within the recording industry. Music critics have acclaimed her musical productions, which have generated some controversy. Referred to as the " Queen of Pop", Madonna is often cited as an influence by other artists.

Born in Bay City, Michigan, Madonna moved to New York City in 1977 to pursue a career in modern dance. After performing in the music groups Breakfast Club and Emmy, she signed with Sire Records (an auxiliary label of Warner Bros. Records) in 1982 and released her self-titled debut album the following year. She followed it with a series of commercially and critically successful albums, including the Grammy Award winners Ray of Light (1998) and Confessions on a Dance Floor (2005). Throughout her career, Madonna has written and produced most of her songs, with many of them reaching number one on the record charts, including " Like a Virgin", " Papa Don't Preach", " Like a Prayer", " Vogue", " Take a Bow", " Frozen", " Music", " Hung Up", and " 4 Minutes".

Madonna's popularity was further enhanced by her film roles, including Desperately Seeking Susan (1985), Dick Tracy (1990), and Evita (1996); the latter earned her a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress. However, most of her other films have been panned by critics. Her other ventures include fashion design, writing children's books, and filmmaking. She has been acclaimed as a businesswoman, particularly after she founded entertainment company Maverick (including the label Maverick Records). In 2007 she signed an unprecedented US $120 million 360 deal with Live Nation, which led to a record deal with Interscope Records.

Having sold more than 300 million records worldwide , Madonna is recognized as the best-selling female recording artist of all time by Guinness World Records. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) listed her as the best-selling female rock artist of the 20th century and the second highest-certified female artist in the United States, with 64.5 million album units. Madonna is the highest-grossing solo touring artist of all time, earning US $1.31 billion from her concerts since 1990. Madonna became one of the five founding members of the UK Music Hall of Fame and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in her first year of eligibility. She was ranked at number one on VH1's list of 100 Greatest Women in Music and number two (behind only The Beatles) on Billboards list of Greatest Hot 100 Artists of All Time.

Madonna is the second studio album by the American band ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead. It was released on October 19, 1999 by Merge Records.

is a Japanese adult video (AV) studio which specializes in the jukujo niche of Japanese pornography. By 2007, Madonna also launched the label Fitch, which has a focus on the bakunyū niche.

Madonna (Bogorodica) is a Croatian film directed by Neven Hitrec and starring Ljubomir Kerekeš, Lucija Šerbedžija and Ivo Gregurević. It was released in 1999.

Madonna is a 2015 South Korean mystery- drama film written and directed by Shin Su-won. It was screened in the Un Certain Regard section of the 2015 Cannes Film Festival. Kwon So-hyun won Best New Actress at the 35th Korean Association of Film Critics Awards.

A Madonna is a representation of Mary, either alone or with her child Jesus. These images are central icons for both the Catholic and Orthodox churches. The word is . No image permeates Christian art as much as the image of the Madonna and child.

While Mary may be referred to as "the Madonna" in other contexts, in art the term is applied specifically to an artwork in which Mary, with or without the infant Jesus, is the focus, and central figure of the picture. Mary and the infant Jesus may be surrounded by adoring angels or worshiping saints. Images that have a narrative content, including those of the many scenes which make up the Life of the Virgin, are not correctly referred to as "Madonnas" but are given a title that reflects the scene such as the Annunciation to Mary

The earliest images date from the Early Christian Church and are found in the Catacombs of Rome. Representation of Mary became more common after she was proclaimed "God-bearer" ( Theotókos) at the Council of Ephesus in 431. For over a thousand years, through the Byzantine, Medieval and Early Renaissance periods the Madonna was the most often produced pictorial artwork. Many specific images of the Madonna, both painted and sculptured, have achieved fame, either as objects of religious veneration or for their intrinsic artistic qualities. Many of the most renowned painters and sculptors in the history of art have turned their skills toward the creation of Madonna images. These artists include Duccio, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Giovanni Bellini, Caravaggio, Rubens, Salvador Dalí and Henry Moore.

Madonna is the usual title given to a composition by the Norwegian expressionist painter Edvard Munch. Munch painted several versions of the composition, showing a bare-breasted half-length female figure, between 1892 and 1895, using oils on canvas. He also produced versions in print form.

The version owned by the Munch Museum of Oslo was stolen in 2004 but recovered two years later. Two other versions are owned by the National Gallery of Norway and the Kunsthalle Hamburg. Another one is owned by businessman Nelson Blitz, and one was bought in 1999 by Steven A. Cohen.

The lithographic print of the composition is distinguished by a decorative border depicting wriggling sperm, with a fetus-like figure in its bottom left corner. The 1893 version of the painting had a frame with similar decoration, but it was later removed and lost. The print also exists in a number of different versions.

Madonna is the eponymous debut studio album by American singer and songwriter Madonna, released on July 27, 1983 by Sire Records. It was renamed Madonna: The First Album for the 1985 international re-release of the album. In 1982, while establishing herself as a singer in Downtown New York, Madonna met Seymour Stein, president of Sire Records, who signed her after listening to her single " Everybody". The success of the single prompted Sire to sign her for an album's deal. Reggie Lucas was chosen as the primary producer, while Madonna solely wrote five of eight tracks on the album. However, she was not happy with the completed tracks and disagreed with Lucas's production techniques. She then invited John "Jellybean" Benitez to help her finish the album. Benitez remixed many of the tracks and produced " Holiday".

The overall sound of Madonna is dissonant, and is in the form of upbeat synthetic disco, utilizing some of the new technology of the time, like the usage of Linn drum machine, Moog bass and the Oberheim OB-X synthesizer. The songs on the album are sung by Madonna in a bright, girlish vocal timbre, and lyrically talks about love and relationships. To promote the album, Madonna performed in various one-off gigs in clubs and television programs in the United States and United Kingdom throughout 1983–84. The album was later promoted during The Virgin Tour in 1985. Five singles were released from the album, including the international top-ten hits "Holiday", " Lucky Star" and " Borderline". The music videos of the album's singles were released on a video compilation titled Madonna, which became the best-selling videocassette of 1985 in the United States.

Contemporary critics have applauded the album, but Madonna was dismissed by some critics when it was released in 1983. In 2008, the album was ranked at number five on Entertainment Weeklys list of "Top 100 Best Albums of Past 25 Years." The album peaked at number eight on the Billboard 200, and was certified five-times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for shipment of five million copies across the United States. It also reached the top ten of the charts in Australia, France, Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden and the United Kingdom, while selling more than 10 million copies worldwide. Critics retrospectively noted that the album helped popularize dance music in mainstream recording industry. It pointed the direction for numerous female artists of the 1980s and set the standard for dance-pop for decades afterward.

Madonna is a biography by English author Andrew Morton, chronicling the life of American recording artist Madonna. The book was released in November 2001 by St. Martin's Press in the United States and in April 2002 by Michael O'Mara Books in the United Kingdom. Morton decided to write a biography on Madonna in 2000. The release was announced in April 2001 by St. Martin's Press. President and publisher Sally Richardson described the biography to contain details about Madonna's ambitions, her relationships and her lifestyle.

Morton interviewed about 70 people who had known Madonna since her youth. He had to spend a lot of evenings in bars and clubs in New York chatting to people—including artists, musicians, and directors—who had an interesting perspective on Madonna and the world. After its release, Madonna received mixed reviews from contemporary critics, who pointed out Morton's poor writing skills and felt that the book did not present anything new about the singer. The book was a commercial disappointment. In the United States, the book reached eight on The New York Times Best Seller list, and sold half of its initial print.

Madonna herself was critical of Morton writing a biography on her life, and sent a letter to him, asking him to stay away from her family and friends. Morton remained unabashed, saying that he wrote the book because of his interest in the star, not least because she has made a "difference" to pop culture and modern culture. In 2004, a lawsuit was filed against the author by Jim Albright, one of Madonna's ex-lovers mentioned in the book. The lawsuit regarded an image in the book, portraying one of Madonna's gay dancers—with Albright's name underneath. United States District Court ruled out the lawsuit explaining that stating someone is homosexual does not libel or slander them.

Madonna is the second mini-album by South Korean girl group Secret. It was released on August 12, 2010 through TS Entertainment, and contains five tracks. The mini-album debuted at number 5 on the Gaon Album Chart on August 12. "Madonna", the album's lead single, debuted at number 1 on South Korea's Gaon Singles Chart and sold over 1,839,869 digital copies in South Korea within the year of 2010. Kang Jiwon and Kim Kibum, the composers who wrote "Madonna" highlighted that the inspiration behind the song is about living with confidence by becoming an icon in this generation, like the American singer Madonna.