They were particularly taken with an exhibit of Virgin Mary iconography from around the world: a faceless, abstract stone carving from Cameroon a pale, blue-eyed statuette from Ecuador a Black Mary from Senegal, dressed in an ornate gown of blue and gold. Herndon and her husband, Mathew Dryhurst, had been on a short vacation in the mountains nearby. The sanctuary, built in the nineteen-seventies, sits on a cliff overlooking an inviting blue reservoir, in a remote area just south of the Pyrenees. Last fall, the artist and musician Holly Herndon visited Torreciudad, a shrine to the Virgin Mary associated with the controversial Catholic group Opus Dei, in Aragón, Spain.