#Madonna Lactans

[koredzas]

Defendente Ferreri - Nursing Madonna. 1530

[nsfwbible]

Virgin in Front of a Fire Screen

The painting, made around 1440 and attributed to a follower of Robert Campin, defied standards for virgin-and-child iconography: Milk drips from the virgin’s blue-veined breast, which she presents to the viewer instead of her son.

“Such unabashed emphasis on Mary’s nipple is unknown in Italian representations of the same topic,” historian Jutta Sperling notes. “Both before and after their ‘naturalistic’ metamorphosis in the late fifteenth century, Italian versions of the iconography usually portray the Christ Child in the act of suckling rather than the Virgin in the act of baring her breast to the viewer. By contrast, later Flemish artists ... would replicate Campin’s follower’s focus on her nipple and the peculiar address that results from it.”

The Christ child’s genitals are clearly visible under the Virgin’s left hand, perhaps meant to remind viewers that this son of God is human after all.

Shown here is a detail from a public domain photograph of the painting accessed at Wikimedia Commons.

[beautiful-belgium]

Simon Bening - Virgin and Child, Saints Catherine and Barbara (c. 1520)

[starstabberzirc]

Public domain image that I love but just can't quite work into the game: "Madonna Lactans" (aka "Madonna of Melun") by Jean Fouquet, 1450s. I've been trying to avoid religious stuff and full nudity just to make sure I don't limit my audience--I know some of y'all will say it's fine, but hey, there is a LOT of other material to work with--so topless Virgin Mary and full frontal Baby Jesus are just more than I want to work with.

But look at it.

[lady-corrine]

“In contrast with contemporary chroniclers, who could not articulate the relationship between Agnès and the king in any but the terms of overwhelming lust, Fouquet’s lactating Virgin-Agnès visually harmonizes the sacred and the erotic. Her cape is trimmed with ermine, a symbol of purity. We know from Agnès’s will that she owned ermine-trimmed clothing. The crisp linen on which the baby Jesus sits is likewise meaningful. In contemporary portraits of the Virgin we often see white cloth, which Christine de Pizan links to femininity, writing that it gives women pleasure, “which is neither ugly nor unrefined, but honest and decent. So she will make sure that she has beautiful, delicate linen, abundant to decorate and well wrought; she will keep it white and sweet smelling.”

Discussing the Madonna lactans, Megan Holmes explains that as realism became more prominent, the genre became more dangerous—that is, likelier to arouse erotic feelings—and one begins to notice “formal devices that worked to restabilize religious meanings.” Among these was a technique applied to the diptych of interrupting the realistic depiction of the female body: “the Virgin’s bare breast was rendered non-integral, detached from her body, jarring dissonantly with the greater degree of naturalism” cultivated in other parts of the painting. With the Virgin-Agnès’s strangely spherical breast, Fouquet seems to acknowledge his duty to short-circuit erotic appeal. And yet the overall effect is erotic. Erik Inglis describes the “frisson of the [painting’s] explicit and self-aware position on the border between the sacred and the profane.”

More specifically, Miri Rubin writes of the Virgin-Agnès that “although her eye is downcast, the whole effect is courtly, celestial and other-worldly . . . nonetheless personal and enticing,” and Margaret Miles notes more generally that in “a society in which a woman’s milk was a practical, emotional, social, and religious issue, the nursing Virgin was likely to have evoked an intimate and volatile mixture of danger and delight.”

Tracy Adams & Christine Adams —The Creation of the French Royal Mistress

[hzaidan]

2 Religious Icons, Barnaba da Modena and Veneto-Cretan Icons of the Madonna and Child, with footnotes #27

Please follow link for full post

The Nursing Madonna, Virgo Lactans, or Madonna Lactans, is an iconography of the Madonna and Child in which the Virgin Mary is shown breastfeeding the infant Jesus. In Italian it is called the Madonna del Latte ("Madonna of milk"). It was a common type in painting until the change in atmosphere after the Council of Trent, in which it was rather discouraged by the church, at least in public contexts, on grounds of propriety…

Art,Paintings,Bible,Realism,Religion,Icons,Barnaba da Modena,biography,Cretan School,History,Madonna Lactans,Zaidan,Jesus,Mythology,Classical,Icon,footnotes,Christ,

Art #Bible #biography #History #Jesus #mythology #Paintings #religion #Saints #Zaidan #footnote #fineart #Calvary #Christ

[kellymrichman]

Conference Paper: ‘Maternal Bodies: Individual, Collective, Other’, The Maternal Bodies Network Symposium

Paper: ‘Hardly a Heavenly Body: Alice Neel’s ‘Degenerate Madonna’ and the Antibeauty of Maternal Labour’ 

20-minute presentation at the ‘Maternal Bodies: Individual, Collective, Other’ Symposium on June 15, 2023, at the University of Birmingham.

Abstract:

During a severe mental breakdown triggered by child loss in 1931, American artist Alice Neel (1900–1984) painted 'Degenerate Madonna', a bleak study of maternal labour. Seated barefoot before a blood-red wall, the painting’s weary subject—the visual antithesis of the Virgo Lactans (‘Nursing Virgin’) of the Middle Ages—unsuccessfully attempts to breastfeed a pallid child propped on her lap. Contemporary analyses of 'Degenerate Madonna' obsessively gravitate toward the unidealised appearance of the figure’s exposed breasts, which scholars and critics have described as ‘witchy teats’, ‘serpents’, ‘bloody daggers’, and ‘far from nurturant or charming . . . like bells, announcing death, pointy, empty’.

While such dehumanising descriptors align with the haunting nature of the painting, they perpetuate harmful false equivocations about maternal labour and, as a result, construct ‘ordinary’ childbearing bodies as inadequate. This limited scope also overlooks the artist’s possible intentions and plausible inspirations, which are seldom considered in the context of 'Degenerate Madonna'. Using case studies, this paper explores these factors, which include: Leftist ideologies and New Deal art; the artist’s encounters with non-Western sculpture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; and, most significantly, Neel’s complicated views on both childbearing and childrearing.

With these models in mind, one may begin to consider that the 'degenerate' mother’s breasts are not ‘witchy’, serpentine, or lethal; they are simply an unidealised interpretation of the maternal body. As such, the supposed ‘emptiness’ of the figure’s breasts does not necessarily denote a mother who is ‘far from nurturant’; it could, rather, signify the ‘antibeauty’—a term coined by Linda Nochlin in 2006—of a mother who has given so much to her infant that she has nothing more to offer. If this is the case—that Neel’s ‘degenerate’ mother desires to sustain her child but can’t— then what makes the figure ‘degenerate’?

[achterberg123]

Alonso Cano, The Miraculous Lactation of Saint Bernard, c. 1650, oil on panel. Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid.

The Lactation of St Bernard (Lactatio Bernardi in Latin, or simply Lactatio) is based on a miracle or vision concerning St Bernard of Clairvaux where the Virgin sprinkled milk on his lips (in some versions he is awake, praying before an image of the Madonna, in others asleep) In art he usually kneels before a Madonna Lactans, and as Jesus takes a break from feeding, the Virgin squeezes her breast and he is hit with a squirt of milk, often shown travelling an impressive distance. The milk was variously said to have given him wisdom, shown that the Virgin was his mother (and that of mankind generally). Source: Wikipedia

[olusioner-blog]

Madonna del Latte Digital Paris France Collection NFT's Available on OpenSea  https://opensea.io/olusioner Prints and Merchandise Available on Redbud: https://www.redbubble.com/shop/ap/137845465 While I was in Paris at the Louvers I got to see the Nursing Madonna, Virgo Lactans, or Madonna Lactans. It is an iconography of the Madonna and Child in which the Virgin Mary is shown breastfeeding the infant Jesus. In Italian it is called the Madonna del Latte ("Madonna of milk"). It was a common type in painting in its time. #nft #digitalart #redbubble #paris #france #travel #parisjetaime #parisfrance #europe #parisianstyle #EIffelTower #Louvers #CityofLove #InstaParis #Mary #ParisianScenes #TravelFever #PicOfTheDay #MyTravelMemories #GlobalTraveler #BeautifulDestinations #photography #beautiful #picoftheday #photooftheday #instadaily #aesthetic #artoftheday #mosaic #gold (at Paris, France) https://www.instagram.com/p/CnxX9e1u7pu/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[militaryonline]

Isis god

In the bible scholars often associate the dragon with the devil and we find Isis had morphed into Typhoon which means “terrible mother” also associated with the dragon. Typhon, in the Greek legend, is a monstrous dragon.” Then Horus conquered Typhon a second time. Horus thereupon rebelled, laid hands on his mother and tore the regal ornaments from her head, whereupon Hermes gave her a cow’s head. That is, Horus vanquished the evil Typhon, who murdered Osiris treacherously (terrible mother= Typhon). “ Isis, the mother of god, played an evil trick on the sun-god with the poisonous snake also Isis behaved treacherously toward her son Horus in Plutarch’s tradition. Here is an excerpt from the book, “ Psychology of the Unconscious: A Study of the Transformations and Symbolisms,” by Carl Gustav Jung and Beatrice M. Hence, the connection with the Sumerian Tiamat, the Serpent of Chaos, the Ancient One, mother of the gods and all abominations and Isis who we also know as Set, the god of darkness, and chaos. In later myths he is also the god of darkness, and chaos. Set is a god of the desert, storms, and foreigners in ancient Egyptian religion. 15, 71.Īnne Bromberg, DMA unpublished material, May 1997.The Goddess Isis was also known to the Sumerians as Tiamat, the Serpent of Chaos, the Ancient One, mother of the gods and all abominations of chaos. The Egyptian god Set was originally a female deity and was identified with Isis. Silverman, ed., (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), cat. Elliott, "Isis Nursing Horus" in Searching for Ancient Egypt: Art, Architecture, and Artifacts from the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, David P. May, "Isis Nursing the Infant Horus" in Searching for Ancient Egypt: Art, Architecture, and Artifacts from the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, David P. The form of Horus called Harpokrates ("Horus-the-child") was especially popular in Late Period and Greco-Roman Egypt, where he was believed to avert evil.Īlan M. It is also possible that figures like this one influenced early Christian imagery of the Madonna and Child. These associations of Isis, as the goddess of life and rebirth, led to the great popularity of the cult of Isis during the Greek and Roman periods. In the cult of Osiris, the god became King of the Afterworld, while their son Horus was identified with the Egyptian Pharaoh. Divine mother and nursing infant statuettes are representative of the ex-voto type Isis Lactans, whose archetype can be traced to the 8th Dynasty or before and is found by the hundreds on amulets in bronze and faience after 700 BCE.Īfter Osiris was murdered by his brother Seth, Isis helped to revive his dead body. Isis is the Greek form of her name in ancient Egyptian, she was called Ist, meaning "seat." Known as the "goddess of many names," she was thought to be a great magician, capable of controlling others through her magical knowledge of their names. She wears a clinging garment with her breasts bared, and with one hand she cups her left breast while she nurses the infant Horus.

Originally, this figure would have occupied a wooden throne, which does not survive. Sometimes she is shown with a throne on her head or seated on a throne, which recalls her close association with the royal succession of the king. Here she wears a tripartite wig with a uraeus surmounted by cow horns cradling a solar disk, the attribute of Horus. Isis, like other Egyptian anthropomorphic deities, carries the symbol of her attributes on her head. She was widely regarded throughout antiquity as the personification of the ideal wife and protective mother. As the wife of Osiris and the mother of Horus, Isis was the most popular Egyptian goddess.

[nsfwbible]

Bambino Lactans

Netherlandish artist Jan Gossaert made many paintings on the theme of the “madonna lactans,” or nursing madonna. This one, from around 1525, shows the baby Jesus with swollen breasts — as if he wanted to take over his mother’s role of lactating.

Modern scholars have suggested that Gossaert wanted to represent Christ’s motherly role of loving, feeding and saving humankind. 

But the painting’s “peculiar erotic charge — enhanced by the abundance of folds produced by Mary’s garments and the tactile appeal of the infant’s podgy body — makes the modern viewer wonder, again, whether the image was fit for prayer and worship,” historian Jutta Sperling observes.

Sperling wonders if Gossaert’s  “almost-lactating infant Jesus might have been a satirical response to and adaptation of Erasmus’s biting critique of the worship of the lactating Virgin and her milk relics.”

The image here is a detail from the original oil on oak panel in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.

[koredzas]

Carlo da Camerino - Our Lady of Humility with the Temptation of Eve. 1400

[apenitentialprayer]

At the same time, however, visual images of the nursing Virgin might have evoked in viewers a strong sense of the nourishing power of women at a time of personal anxiety and cultural crisis […] Images of the nursing Virgin signify power to conceive, to nourish, shelter, and sustain human life, a power that may well have been understood by fourteenth century people as “the body’s best show of power” […] - a power derived from her body but ultimately a social as well as physical power. […] There is, however, little evidence that women identified with the Virgin’s power. […] We have no direct evidence as to how women understood and reacted to these images.

Margaret R. Miles (“The Virgin's One Bare Breast: Nudity, Gender, and Religious Meaning in Tuscan Early Renaissance Culture”)

[lescuriositesdelafoire]

Attributed to Marco d' Oggiono (1470–1549),  Madonna and Child in a landscape

[appliedmariology]

“I love Isaiah’s image of Jerusalem, God’s city, being seen as a nursing mother, as a mother comforting her child. God is not a divine Mother and yet femaleness and maternal love are not foreign to God and they are very much a part of our experience of the divine love. Isaiah expresses this beautifully: God gives he people a holy mother to comfort them with his maternal love: Jerusalem is consistently identified as a mother. God is Father, but God knows his children need a mother and God always provides us with absolute maternal care.

“And in Aunt Beast L’Engle evokes this imagery beautifully.

+ + +

“A friend remarked that the scene with Aunt Beast identifies a common primal longing: We yearn to have that unconditional love and nurture, to be cuddled and cared for, to be accepted for the totality of who we are, with all our complexity of pain, sadness, shame, guilt, anger, grief, and joy.

This is what Mary, our Blessed Mother should be for us, a strong maternal presence, nurturing and loving. Sadly, images that portray her as this nurturing mother are too few and far between. So often Mary is saccharine and plaster: pretty, pastel, idealized, hardly human. She doesn’t have to be that way, but somehow that sentimental Mary is what most Catholic gift shops serve up and what gets displayed in too many Catholic homes and churches. Which is strange because it’s in such stark contrast to most medieval and renaissance “art which portrays the Blessed Mother in her complicated humanity.”

[theraccolta]

Madonna And Child, Follower of Peter Paul Rubens