Milk and Miracles: Heteroglossia and Dissent in Venetian Religious Art after the Council of Trent

Abstract

This essay investigates Benedetto Caliari's Nativity of the Virgin (1576) with its provocative and unorthodox depiction of a bare-breasted wet-nurse in the context of both Protestant and Catholic criticism of “indecent” religious imagery. Reformers on both sides drew a connection between the Virgin Mary's ostentatious display of her lactating breasts and her presumed, derided, or hoped-for miracle-working capacities or intercessory powers. In post-Tridentine Venice, several artists, including Tintoretto and Veronese, all of whom were connected to the Scuola de’ Mercanti that commissioned Caliari's painting, employed religious breastfeeding imagery in a wide array of iconographies in order to express dissent with the Counter-Reformation church's emphasis on orthodoxy. In contrast to writers, artists were able to claim a certain degree of nonconformity and freedom from prosecution. In light of Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of heteroglossia, it is argued that religious lactation imagery after Trent produced irony, parody, doubt, and dissent.

The Nursing Madonna in the Middle Ages: An Interdisciplinary Study

“…However, Williamson (1996Williamson ( , 2009 remains the point of reference in studies on the iconographic types of the Madonna Lactans and the Virgin of Humility, as well as on the relationship between Eve and Mary (Williamson 1998). Sperling (2013Sperling ( , 2018aSperling ( , 2018bSperling ( , 2021, Rivera (2016), Arroñada (2008) and Bergmann (2002) have studied the use of wet nurses; however, scholars have not reached agreement on the consideration of breastfeeding and the hiring of wet nurses in the Middle Ages. Moreover, as we will see later, painted images have contributed to this confusion.…”

The Virgin Mary in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: Devotion and Iconography

“…However, Williamson (1996Williamson ( , 2009 remains the point of reference in studies on the iconographic types of the Madonna Lactans and the Virgin of Humility, as well as on the relationship between Eve and Mary (Williamson 1998). Sperling (2013Sperling ( , 2018aSperling ( , 2018bSperling ( , 2021, Rivera (2016), Arroñada (2008) and Bergmann (2002) have studied the use of wet nurses; however, scholars have not reached agreement on the consideration of breastfeeding and the hiring of wet nurses in the Middle Ages. Moreover, as we will see later, painted images have contributed to this confusion.…”