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

2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (3) ◽  
pp. 868-918 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jutta Sperling
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Religious Art ◽  
Visual Context ◽  
Bare Breast ◽  
Saint Bernard

AbstractThe 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.

Seven Sacraments Compositions in English Medieval Art

1929 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 83-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. McN. Rushforth
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Religious Art ◽  
Medieval Art ◽  
Christian Art ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Great Tradition ◽  
Speculum Humanae Salvationis ◽  
Church Art ◽  
The Church

Émile Mâle says that medieval Christian art in its last period had lost touch with the great tradition of symbolism which had been so important in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and still largely dominated the art of the fourteenth. But there was one great symbolical idea which survived, and that was the harmony of the Old and New Testaments; and so we find among the most popular subjects of fifteenth-century Church art the concordance of the Apostles and Prophets in the Creed, and the series of parallels between the life of Jesus and episodes of Old Testament history, which were summed up and digested in the Biblia Pauperum and the Speculum Humanae Salvationis. The reason for the popularity of these subjects was, no doubt, their didactic value, and though Mâle does not develop this side of the subject, we may say that one, though not the only, characteristic of the religious art of the fifteenth century was that, instead of being symbolical, it became didactic. We find in this period a whole series of subjects which reduced the articles of Christian faith and practice to pictorial form, and seem to have been intended to illustrate the medieval catechism by which the teaching of the Church was imparted.

St Francis for Protestants

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henk Os
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Mystical Experience ◽  
Religious Art ◽  
Work Of Art

Lorenzo Monaco's striking fifteenth-century portrayal of the stigmatisation of St. Francis was once owned by the art collector Otto Lanz. What prompted Lanz to buy Monaco's painting in the 1920s? Was it simply because he saw it as a beautiful, unique work of art? Or was there something more-could Lanz have been drawn in by the mystical experience that the painting depicts? In this essay, Henk van Os attempts to uncover the motivation for Otto Lanz's purchase, in the process raising provocative questions about our relationship to religious art in a more secular era.

scholarly journals “To the honour and worship of Almighty God and his saints:” Lay Patronage at All Saints’ Parish Church, Bristol

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalie Gearin
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
High Volume ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Religious Art ◽  
Medieval Art ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Architectural Elements ◽  
Art Objects ◽  
Written Word

Countless objects across England were destroyed, leaving comparably few traces of late medieval art, architecture, and religious practice for examination today. Written documents, however, were not an active target of the Reformation. In some cases they are the best resource available for understanding and imagining the appearance, importance, and role of parish churches in the late medieval era. They provide glimpses of very personal relationships between the laity and the churches they used, and help to discern some of the ways in which benefactors could actively shape the interiors of these buildings to assert their authority within the community, and obtain prayers for salvation after death. Additionally, the laity helped form the congregation’s sensory perception of the Mass through donations of objects that engaged sight, touch, and sound. This will be demonstrated through the use of primary source texts written in fifteenth century English and accompanying modern translations of those texts, surviving artistic and architectural elements, and secondary interpretations of medieval documents. Original fifteenth century wills, churchwarden accounts, and inventories can be extremely thorough and difficult to follow; therefore, this research requires careful close reading of a high volume of documents spanning decades. Constructing a visual narrative based solely on written word is challenging, yet ultimately rewarding in cases in which a church’s religious art objects do not survive. Doing so can lead to significant revelations about the realities of late medieval religion. 

Christianity in Fifteenth-Century Iraq

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas A. Carlson
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century

The Fifteenth Century XVI

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century

The Church in Italy in the Fifteenth Century

1977 ◽  
Author(s):  
Denys Hay
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
The Church
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