Saint Bernard's Vision of the Virgin and Childby Simon Marmion
c. 1480 - 90
Tempera and gold on parchment
J Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Helpful squishy Jesus! Here he holds the gold staff of Saint Bernard, allowing him to pray directly to to Mary's breast.
1 comment:
This type of picture of Mary and Bernard is a common theme for several other painters. One story to account for it is Bernard had an eye infection and while worshiping at a statue of the Virgin she squirted mother's milk in his eye to heal it. This is a common practice with mother's that breast feed as the milk, especially in the first 3 months, is high in natural anti biotic and famous for healing eye infections. I've nursed my children and tried it a couple of times and it works. On the other hand, no painting ever shows the milk ever going into the eye. It hits the forehead or the mouth giving another meaning to the paintings. Royal or noblity mothers never used wet nurses for fear any but noble milk would damage their child. Bernard was of the House of Burgundy and considered a noble. He also was involved with the Templar's who believed Christ was married with children. One of Bernard's cousins was Godfroy De Bouillion leader of the 1st Crusade who believed himself the descendant of the Swan Knight who was the son of Parzival the Grail King blah,blah,blah the upshot being Bernard perhaps also considered Mary a progenitor and therefore confirmed it by the miracle of her "Mothers" milk to "noble" relatives only. In other paintings it either hits the forehead "feeding" inspiration, or the mouth "feeding" his famous ability to speak eloquently and persuasively. Why the house of Burgundy thought is was so special and why they started the order of the Golden Fleece of Colchis would take too many pages to go into but is a fantastic story going back to the Royal House of Bagratuni of the city of Ani of Armenia,the Sassanid Empire and the Persian royal line of Cyrus the Great. I realise Squishy you don't take God or Jesus much less Mary in any way serious but just because their stories have been botched over the centuries doesn't mean the are not who they are claimed to be. However, like Kipling's poem about the 6 blind men of Hindustan who went to see and touch an elephant and came up with six wrong answers, that any one with sight could clearly see were wrong, it doesn't preclude there is no such thing as an elephant or the metaphor it stands for i.e. absolute truth, it just proves it is very hard to find.
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