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

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.

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.…”

Le lait des chrétiens. Imaginaire biblique, modèles de comportement et lactations extraordinaires à l’époque moderne

“…L'ambivalence de cette perspective sur la transmission devient visible à travers la mélancolie des Walker Bynum, 1995. Voir aussi Lett, 2002Barnay, 2011 ;Sperling, 2018 ;Roux, 2020. Voir notamment Br. Roux, « La relique du lait de la Vierge », et J. Planamente dans ce volume.…”

Transcribing "Le Pèlerinage de Damoiselle Sapience": Scholarly Editing Covid19-Style

“…The reference to the breast and breastfeeding (f. 88r) implies that this text's author was conversant with the devotion to breastmilk, perhaps in the form of the Madonna Lactans and the Virgin's breastmilk that St. Bernard received in a vision (Sperling 2018), that became popular starting in the mid-fifteenth century. The physical elements evokedthe description of the infant body, the declaration of "how happy is the mother who breastfeeds this mouth, who often smells the divine odor of such a beautiful child, and who kisses the sweet little savory mouth whenever she wants"-are also a call to affective piety, similar to what we see in other contemporaneous Middle French texts (Kaplan 2016, 229), implying that the composition of the "Pèlerinage" may well coincide with the confection of the manuscript in which this lone copy is found.…”