Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T15:14:09.331Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Squeezing, Squirting, Spilling Milk: The Lactation of Saint Bernard and the Flemish Madonna Lactans (ca. 1430–1530)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Jutta Sperling*
Affiliation:
Hampshire College

Abstract

The focus on three drops of milk issuing from the Virgin’s breast in “The Virgin in Front of a Fire Screen” was inspired by contemporary representations of the Lactation of Saint Bernard. This latter iconography provides the visual context for the vivid address of eroticized depictions of the Madonna’s “one bare breast” in Flemish art and shows the intricate connections between visuality and materiality in fifteenth-century Flemish religious art. Some depictions of Saint Bernard’s lactation transform the Madonna’s jets of milk into rays of light aiming for his eyes, stressing the interchangeability of materiality and visuality as modes that were expected to facilitate and/or authenticate miraculous appearances of the Madonna.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 Renaissance Society of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Acta Sanctorum Aprilis. 3 vols. Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1675.Google Scholar
Aelred of Rivaulx. Treatises: The Pastoral Prayer. Ed. David Knowles. Spencer, MA: Cistercian Publications, 1971.Google Scholar
Aurenhammer, Hans. Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie. 4 vols. Vienna: Verlag Brüder Hollinek, 1962.Google Scholar
Bacci, Michele. “A Sacred Space for a Holy Icon: The Shrine of Our Lady of Saydnaya.” In Hierotopy: The Creation of Sacred Spaces in Byzantium and Ancient Russia, ed. Alexei Lidov, 373–87. Moscow: Indrik, 2006.Google Scholar
Belting, Hans. Bild und Kult: Eine Geschichte des Bildes vor dem Zeitalter der Kunst. München: Beck Verlag, 1990.Google Scholar
Bernardino of Siena, Saint. Prediche Volgari. Ed. Piero Bargellini. Rome: Rizzoli, 1936.Google Scholar
Bernard of Clairvaux, Saint. On the Song of Songs. Trans. Kilian Walsh. Ed. M. Corneille Halfants. 4 vols. Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1976–81.Google Scholar
Berschin, Walter. Os meum aperui: Die Autobiographie Ruperts von Deutz. Cologne: Luthe-Verlag, 1985.Google Scholar
Bynum, Caroline Walker. “The Body of Christ in the Late Middle Ages: A Reply to Leo Steinberg.” Renaissance Quarterly 39.3 (1986): 399–439.10.2307/2862038CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bynum, Caroline Walker. Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Bynum, Caroline Walker. “Seeing and Seeing Beyond: The Mass of Saint Gregory in the Fifteenth Century.” In The Mind’s Eye (2006), 208–40.Google Scholar
Bynum, Caroline Walker. Christian Materiality: An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe. New York: Zone Books, 2011.Google Scholar
Caesarius of Heisterbach. The Dialogue on Miracles. 2 vols. London: George Routledge & Sons, 1929.Google Scholar
Camille, Michael. The Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image-Making in Medieval Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Camille, Michael. “Seductions of the Flesh: Meister Francke’s Female ‘Man’ of Sorrows.” In Frömmigkeit im Mittelalter (2002), 243–69.Google Scholar
Cantimpré, Thomas of. The Collected Saints’ Lives: Abbot John of Cantimpré, Christina the Astonishing, Margaret of Ypres, and Lutgard of Aywièrs. Ed. Barbara Newman. Trans. Margot H. King and Barbara Newman. Turnhout: Brepols, 2008.Google Scholar
Cartulaire de Notre-Dame de Chartres. Ed. E. de Lépinois and Lucien Merlet. Chartres: Garnier Imprimeur, 1862.Google Scholar
Georges, Didi-Huberman. Fra’ Angelico: Dissemblance and Fiction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Dinzelbacher, Peter. “Religiöses Erleben vor bildender Kunst in autobiographischen und biographischen Zeugnissen des Hoch- und Spätmittelalters.” In Frömmigkeit im Mittelalter (2002), 299–330.Google Scholar
Dupeux, Cécile. “Saint Bernard dans l’iconographie médiévale: L’exemple de la lactation.” In Vies et légendes de Saint Bernard de Clairvaux, ed. Patrick Arabeyre, Jacques Berlioz, and Philippe Poirrier, 152–65. Saint-Nicolas-lès-Cîteaux: Abbaye de Citeaux, 1993.Google Scholar
Durán, P. Rafael M. Iconografía española de San Bernardo. Barcelona: Monasterio de Poblet, 1953.Google Scholar
Ebner, Margarete, and Heinrich von Nördlingen. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der deutschen Mystik. Ed. Philipp Strauch. Amsterdam: Verlag P. Schippers, 1966.Google Scholar
Erasmus of Rotterdam. “A Pilgrimage for Religion’s Sake.” In The Colloquies, trans. Craig R. Thompson, 285–312. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965.Google Scholar
Ewing, Dan. “Joos van Cleve und Leonardo. Italienische Kunst in niederländischer Übersetzung.” In Joos van Cleve: Leonardo des Nordens (2011), 112–32.Google Scholar
Eynsham Cartulary. Ed. H. E. Salter. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908.Google Scholar
Fassler, Margo. “Mary’s Nativity, Fulbert of Chartres, and the Stirps Jesse: Liturgical Innovation circa 1000 and Its Afterlife.” Speculum 75.2 (2000): 389–434.10.2307/2887583CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Finucane, Ronald C.. Miracles and Pilgrims: Popular Beliefs in Medieval England. Totowa, NY: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
France, James. Medieval Images of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux. Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 2007.Google Scholar
Freedberg, David. The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.10.7208/chicago/9780226259031.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frère Laurent. La Somme le roi. Copyist Lambert le petit. Paris: Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, MS 6329. 1311.Google Scholar
Frömmigkeit im Mittelalter: Politisch-soziale Kontexte, visuelle Praxis, körperliche Ausdrucksformen. Ed. Schreiner, Klaus, with Marc Müntz. Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2002.Google Scholar
Gautier de Coinci. Les Miracles de Nostre Dame. Ed. V. Frederic Koenig. 4 vols. Geneva: Droz, 1966.Google Scholar
Gerald of Wales. The Jewels of the Church: A Translation of Gemma Ecclesiastica by Giraldus Cambrensis. Ed. John J. Hagen. Leiden: Brill, 1979.Google Scholar
Gertrude of Helfta. “Le Héraut.” In Oeuvres spirituelles, vol. 3. Ed. Pierre Doyère. Paris: Les éditions du cerf, 1968.Google Scholar
Hamburger, Jeffrey F. The Rothschild Canticles: Art and Mysticism in Flanders and the Rhineland circa 1300. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990.Google Scholar
Hamburger, Jeffrey F.. The Visual and the Visionary: Art and Female Spirituality in Late Medieval Germany. New York: Zone Books, 1998.Google Scholar
Hand, John Oliver. Joos Van Cleve: The Complete Paintings. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Hendrix, John S. “Perception as a Function of Desire in the Renaissance.” In Renaissance Theories of Vision (2010), 89–102.Google Scholar
Holmes, Megan. “Disrobing the Virgin: The Madonna lactans in Fifteenth-Century Florentine Art.” In Picturing Women in Renaissance and Baroque Italy, ed. Geraldine A. Johnson and Sara F. Matthews Grieco, 167–95. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Holmes, Megan. The Miraculous Image in Renaissance Florence. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013.Google Scholar
Hudson, Anne, ed. Selections from English Wycliffite Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978.Google Scholar
Joos van Cleve: Leonardo des Nordens. Ed. Peter van den Brijnk, with Alice Taatgen and Heinrich Becker. Stuttgart: Belser, 2011.Google Scholar
Karlstadt, Andreas. “Von Abtuhung der Bilder.” In Von Abtuhung der Bilder und das keyn Bedtler unter den Christen seyn sollen, ed. Hans Liezmann, 3–22. Bonn: A. Marcus and E. Weber’s Verlag, 1911.Google Scholar
Kemperdick, Stephan. Der Meister von Flémalle: Die Werkstatt Robert Campins und Rogier van der Weyden. Turnhout: Brepols, 1997.Google Scholar
Koerner, Joseph Leo. The Reformation of the Image. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Leeflang, Micha. “‘Was Ihr wollt.’ Joos van Cleves Werkstatt und der Kunstmarkt.” In Joos van Cleve: Leonardo des Nordens (2011), 132–55.Google Scholar
Lentes, Thomas. “Inneres Auge, äußerer Blick und heilige Schau. Ein Diskussionsbeitrag zur visuellen Praxis in Frömmigkeit und Moraldidaxe des späten Mittelalters.” In Frömmigkeit im Mittelalter (2002), 179–220.Google Scholar
Lentes, Thomas. “‘As far as the eye can see …’: Rituals of Gazing in the Late Middle Ages.” In The Mind’s Eye (2006), 360–73.Google Scholar
Luther, Martin. “Predigt vom Reiche Christi aus dem VIII. Psalm. Gehalten zu Merseburg Anno 1545.” In Des Theuren Mannes Gottes, D. Martin Luthers Sämtliche … Schriften und Werke, ed. C. F. Boerner, 12:150–56. Leipzig: Johann Heinrich Zedler, 1731.Google Scholar
Luther, Martin. “Sermon von der Bereitung zum Sterben (1519).” In D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, 2:680–97. Weimar: H. Böhlau, Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 1884.Google Scholar
Matthews, Thomas F., and Norman Muller. “Isis and Mary in Early Icons.” In Images of the Mother of God: Perceptions of the Theotokos in Byzantium, ed. Maria Vassilaki, 3–12. Farnham: Ashgate, 2005.Google Scholar
Meditations on the Life of Christ: An Illustrated Manuscript of the Fourteenth Century. Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Ms. Ital. 115. Trans. Isa Ragusa. Ed. Isa Ragusa and Rosalie B. Green. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977.Google Scholar
Merback, Mitchell. The Thief, the Cross, and the Wheel: Pain and the Spectacle of Punishment in Medieval and Renaissance Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Miles, Margaret R. “The Virgin’s One Bare Breast: Female Nudity and Religious Meaning in Tuscan Early Renaissance Culture.” In The Female Body in Western Culture: Contemporary Perspectives, ed. Susan R. Suleiman, 193–208. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986.Google Scholar
The Mind’s Eye: Art and Theological Argument in the Middle Ages. Ed. Jeffrey Hamburger and Anne-Marie Bouché. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Mitchell, W. J. T. What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.10.7208/chicago/9780226245904.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nagel, Alexander. The Controversy of Renaissance Art. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Nagel, Alexander, and Christopher S. Wood. Anachronic Renaissance. New York: Zone Books, 2010.Google Scholar
Prà, Laura dal. “Bernardo di Chiaravalle: Realtà e interpretazione nell’arte italiana.” In Bernardo di Chiaravalle nell’arte italiana dal XIV al XVIII secolo, ed. Laura dal Prà, 29–88. Milan: Electa, 1990.Google Scholar
Reinerus monachus S. Laurentii Leodiensis (Reiner of Lüttich). “Lacrymarum libelli tres.” In Patrologiae Cursus Completes: Series Latina, 204:153–79. Ed. Jacques Paul Migne. Paris: J.-P. Migne Editorem, 1855.Google Scholar
Religion and Culture in Germany (1400–1800). Ed. Lyndal Roper. Leiden: Brill, 2001.Google Scholar
Renaissance Theories of Vision. Ed. John Shannon Hendrix and Charles H. Carman. Farnham: Ashgate, 2010.Google Scholar
von Schöntal, Richalm. Liber revelationum. Ed. Paul Gerhard Schmidt. Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2009.Google Scholar
Rigaux, Dominique. “Réflexions sur les usages apotropaïques de l’image peinte. Autour de quelques peintures murales novarais du Quattrocento.” In L’image: Fonctions et usages des images dans l’Occident médiéval, ed. Jérôme Baschet and Jean-Claude Schmitt, 155–78. Paris: Le Léopard d’Or, 1996.Google Scholar
Sand, Alexa. “Vindictive Virgins: Animate Images and Theories of Art in Some Thirteenth-Century Miracle Stories.” Word and Image 26.2 (2010): 150–59.10.1080/02666280902954568CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sand, Alexa. Vision, Devotion, and Self-Representation in Late Medieval Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.10.1017/CBO9781139424769CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schmidt, Peter. “Beschriebene Bilder: Benutzernotizen als Zeugnisse frommer Bildpraxis im späten Mittelalter.” In Frömmigkeit im Mittelalter (2002), 347–84.Google Scholar
Schnitzler, Norbert. “Illusion, Täuschung, und schöner Schein: Probleme der Bilderverehrung im späten Mittelalter.” In Frömmigkeit im Mittelalter (2002), 221–42.Google Scholar
Schreiner, Klaus. “Soziale, visuelle, und körperliche Dimensionen mittelalterlicher Frömmigkeit. Fragen, Themen, Erträge einer Tagung.” In Frömmigkeit im Mittelalter (2002), 9–40.Google Scholar
Scribner, Bob. “From the Sacred Image to the Sensual Gaze: Sense Perceptions and the Visual in the Objectification of the Female Body in Sixteenth Century Germany.” In Religion and Culture (2001a), 129–48.Google Scholar
Scribner, Bob. “Perceptions of the Sacred in Germany at the End of the Middle Ages.” In Religion and Culture (2001b), 87–103.Google Scholar
Scribner, Bob. “Popular Piety and Modes of Visual Perception in Late-Medieval and Reformation Germany.” In Religion and Culture (2001c), 104–28.Google Scholar
Seasonwein, Johanna. “The Nursing Queen: Sculptures of the Virgo Lactans in Late Medieval France.” Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 2010.Google Scholar
Seuse, Heinrich (Suso, Henry). Deutsche Schriften. Ed. Karl Bihlmeyer. Frankfurt am Main: Minerva GmbH, 1961.Google Scholar
Sheingorn, Pamela. The Book of Sainte Foy. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995.10.9783/9780812200522CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Songs of Holy Mary of Alfonso X, the Wise. Trans. Kathleen Kulp-Hill. Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2000.Google Scholar
Sperling, Jutta. “Address, Desire, Lactation: On Some Gender-Bending Images of the Virgin and Child by Jan Gossaert.” Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch 76 (2015): 49–77.Google Scholar
Sperling, Jutta. Roman Charity: Queer Lactations in Early Modern Visual Culture. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2016.10.14361/9783839432846CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steinberg, Leo. The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.10.7208/chicago/9780226226316.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Talvacchia, Bette. “The Word Made Flesh: Spiritual Subjects and Carnal Depictions in Renaissance Art.” In The Sensuous in the Counter-Reformation, ed. Marcia B. Hall and Tracy E. Cooper, 49–73. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.Google Scholar
Thürlemann, Felix. Robert Campin: A Monographic Study with Critical Catalogue. Munich: Prestel, 2002.Google Scholar
Vincent of Beauvais. Speculum historiale. Trans. Jean de Vignay. 2 vols. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, Gallica, MS fr. 15940.Google Scholar
Weststeijn, Thijs. “Seeing and the Transfers of Spirits in Early Modern Art Theory.” In Renaissance Theories of Vision (2010), 149–70.Google Scholar
Williamson, Beth. “Altarpieces, Liturgy, and Devotion.” Speculum 79.2 (2004): 341–406.10.1017/S0038713400087947CrossRefGoogle Scholar