#maria lactans

[artthatgivesmefeelings]

Pieter Coecke van Aelst the Younger (Flemish, before 1502/07-c.1550) Maria lactans in front of a city, 16th century

[globalworship]

“Mary Breastfeeding Baby Jesus” paintings

1 "Breastfeeding Madonna and Child" by Jody Parmann https://www.redbubble.com/i/art-print/Breastfeeding-Madonna-and-Child-by-JayEllePea/31424869.1G4ZT [you can buy prints]

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2 Ukraine icon by Uliana Krekhovets' "Nation. Nativity. UA" [Ukraine] https://iconart-gallery.com/en/catalogue/#!/Uliana-Krekhovets-Nation-Nativity-UA/p/517985986

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3 “Mary Breastfeeding Baby Jesus” by Kelly Latimore

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Kelly wrote:

Referred to in the Latin as “Maria Lactans” or “Madonna del Latte”, in the Orthodox Church called “Galaktotrophousa”, Greek for “the milk giver.”

I have had many requests to paint an icon of this over the last few years. While doing research we found a great article by David Gibson in 2012, called, “Christmas' Missing Icon: Mary Breastfeeding Jesus.”

https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2012-12/christmas-missing-icon-mary-breastfeeding-jesus

Ask anybody what the primary Christian symbol is, and they will most likely say the crucifixion. However, in the early Church it was the lactating Mary, that was the major symbol of God’s love for humanity. In fact, the oldest known image of Mary is from a second Century fresco in a Roman catacomb that shows the infant Jesus “suckling at her exposed breast.” **

In the following centuries many iconographers created various versions of the image. By the Middle Ages, the image became very popular. “Lactation Miracles” and “Milk shrines” popped up around the Christian world.

However, during the rise of Protestantism that encouraged a focus on scripture and discouraged the use of images, along with the dawn of movable type and new medical and sexual understandings of the body, a cultural shift was so great that many, even in the Catholic Church, soon came to see the breastfeeding Mary as an “inappropriate” sacred image.

Yet, I think this symbol of Mary nursing Jesus is one of the most beautiful forgotten images of the Advent season and of the incarnation. As Margaret Miles says, “I think there should be a plethora of symbols of God’s love for humanity. Can there be only one way to talk about so great a mystery? No, there can’t.”

--https://kellylatimoreicons.com/collections/signed-print/products/mary-breastfeeding-baby-jesus (you can buy prints of this icon at the link above)

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** According to historical records, the oldest known image of the Virgin Mary is a third-century fresco found in the Roman Catacombs of Priscilla, depicting her with the infant Jesus suckling at her exposed breast, often referred to as "Maria Lactans" in Latin; this image is considered the earliest representation of Mary nursing the baby Jesus. https://pureandlowly.wordpress.com/symbolised/first-known-image-of-mary-in-catacombs-of-priscilla/

Location: Catacombs of Priscilla (Rome, Italy) Medium: Fresco Time: 170 BC Dimensions: 14.79 x 16.42

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4 My friend Charles Tryon is an artist. He wrote, "I often do quick sketches during church services, and often on Christmas Eve. This was from 2020. Titled, 'Not what I was Expecting...'" https://tryonsculpturearts.com/

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Article: "The Sacrament of Breastfeeding: Mary & Jesus" https://sacraparental.com/2014/08/03/the-sacrament-of-breastfeeding-4-mary-and-jesus/

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5 Mary Nursing Jesus, by Nichole Lanthier

Purchase prints at https://www.etsy.com/listing/1203995091/mary-nursing-jesus-art-our-lady-of-la

[nsfwbible]

‘give us to drink from your over-abundant pitcher’

The painted panel illustrates the miraculous lactation of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux. A century after his death in 1153, legends arose in which the Virgin Mary appears to him as he prays, revealing secrets of the faith — and spouting milk from her breast into his mouth.

“She bared the breast of mercy to all men so that they might all receive of its abundance, and so that the captive might be granted Redemption; the ailing, health; the afflicted, comfort; the sinner, forgiveness,” Bernard wrote in one sermon. “Feed your poor today, our Lady; and give us to drink from your over-abundant pitcher.”

The painting, made in around 1480 by an unknown artist, belongs to the Grand Curtius Museum in Belgium.

[taunuswolf]

Rengersbrunn das “Lourdes des Spessarts” hat nicht einmal einen Gasthof

[koredzas]

Sandro Botticelli (1445 - 1510) - Simonetta Vespucci as Maria Lactans. 

[benozzo-gozzoli]

Tabernacle of the Madonna delle Tosse: Maria lactans, 1484, Benozzo Gozzoli

Medium: fresco

[apenitentialprayer]

Medieval Breastfeeding Miracles

I’ve posted a few excerpts already about the theme of the Madonna Lactans, and how images of the lactating Virgin Mary were symbols of grace and motherly love. As Olson notes, “Marian miracle stories show Marian devotion as largely functional and primarily focused on rescue and healing.” In terms of breastfeeding miracles, three major types can be found in the hagiographic literature of the 13th-15th centuries. They are listed below, with examples for each.

Milk Relic Healings The ingestion of milk purported to be from the breasts of the Virgin Mary herself was believed to be able to cause miraculous healings.

Walsingham, the location of a Marian apparition that apparently occurred in the mid-11th Century, had a reliquary holding Marian breastmilk. Drops of this milk would be mixed into vials of water and sold to pilgrims in need of healing.

The Milk Grotto in Bethlehem is supposed to have been a location where Mary breastfed the infant Christ; some droplets fell to the floor and mixed into the dirt. Since then, scraping some dirt from the floor and mixing it with water was thought to create a curative - “demand was so great for the substance that the once small grotto had [to] become ‘greatly enlarged’.”

Petrarch, usually a skeptic of the ‘superstition’ of the ‘Dark Ages,’ recounts a vial of Mary’s milk in the Sancta Sanctorum [in the Lateran Palace, Rome] “by which so many had been restored to health.”

The Nursing Apparition Miracles In addition to reliance on relics, there is a strong tradition of visionaries and Marian devotees who ingest fresh milk from the Virgin herself, either through a stream fired at them or through nursing from her directly. Men and women reported being recipients of this kind of mystical experience, but “most of the miracle accounts indicate men were the primary recipients.”

Blessed Lukardis of Oberweimar (d. 1309), an ailing nun, is said to have received a vision of the Madonna and Child, and was given milk at her own request.

Abbot Gautier de Coincy (fl. 1220s) reports that a monk with an ulcerous face was nursed by Mary; she took a breast that was “so soft, so sweet, so beautiful, and placed it in his mouth.” The monk made a full recovery.

Saint Fulbert, bishop of Chartres (d. 1028), was known for his extreme devotion to Mary and his constant invocation of Mary as his personal protectrix. When he fell gravely ill, Mary both nursed him back to health and provided him with three droplets of milk with which to fill a reliquary to be venerated.

Blessed Paula of Florence (d. 1368), while contemplating an image of the Madonna breastfeeding Christ, felt some droplets of milk fall from the icon and onto her lips.

The Imitatio Maria Breastmilk Miracles In addition to be recipients of miraculous milk, a few devotees and mystics describe instances had become vessels for the production of miraculous milk. In these descriptions, the subject “casts herself as Mary, fully embodying her presence through the act of nursing.”

Blessed Margareta of Ebner, a German nun, describes her “longing and [her] desire to nurse the Christ Child” after contemplating an image of Him; she “was so powerfully compelled” that she took the image and pressed it against her bare breast.

Gertrude van der Oosten, a Dutch Beguine, is said to have “had such a visceral response when contemplating the Nativity that, like Mary, her own breasts would fill with milk.”

While living in the wilderness, Saint Christina the Astonishing (d. 1224) is supposed to have lived off her own miraculously produced breastmilk for nine weeks.

This information comes primarily from Vibeke Olson’s article (“Mystical Visions, Maria Lactans, and the Miracle of Mary's Milk”)

[zenlesszonezero]

Join Zenless Zone Zero with Tsukishiro Yanagi, the deputy leader of Hollow Special Operations Section 6! Beneath her ordinary office lady exterior lies a meticulous, emotionally intelligent big sister to the team.

[justineportraits]

Sandro Botticelli    Simonetta Vespucci as Maria Lactans   15th c.

[blrowanduck]

The Holy Family, by Joos van Cleve, 1520.

An attempt to explore the symbolism of the orange, led me to this painting by Joos van Cleve. He seems to have merged the emotions of the Italian Renaissance with the exactitude and lucidity of early Netherlandish art. He was also an astute business man who knew the paintings people liked and the holy family was one of his best sellers. This example of The Holy Family is in the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg. In this work we see a half length composition of the Virgin with the upright Christ Child standing on a stone parapet. To the left, and somewhat in the background, is Saint Joseph. The Virgin protects the Child from falling by embracing him with her Mannerist elongated hands. The pose we see before us is often referred to in Latin, as Maria Lactans, “the virgin’s nursing breast”, or “the lactating virgin”, which was the primary symbol of God’s love for humanity, a symbol used by humanity to represent the great goddess of Paleolithic Europe.

The orange, native to Southeast Asia found its way to the Mediterranean around 1,500 BC via India. In the East as well as in the Middle East the orange was a favorable symbol representing paradise in many cultures.

At times the orange tree is identified with the tree of knowledge of good and evil. In Dutch painting we often see the orange in Christ's hand, where the orange is called "sinaasappel" meaning Chinese apple.

The trees with white, five-petaled flowers were a symbol of chatsity and purity and were placed in wedding gowns and the hair of the bride. The myths of Greece intertwined with Christian symbolism. In Ovid's telling, Hercules gathers the Golden Apples (Orange) from from the garden in Herperides. Anyway, the orange evolved into a symbol of redemption as well as wealth.

We also see Mary holding a carnation in her left hand which in Italian is called "chiodino" meaning "little nail" and thus became associated with the passion of Christ. The knife laying on the orange is likely an allusion to the lance that pierced the right side of Christ.

PS: The Christ child has a facial expression that looks a little naughty. The roundness of the breast, the grasping arms, and Christ's head are an unconcious trinity.

[eucanthos]

Sandro Botticelli    (1445 - 1510)

Simonetta Vespucci as Maria Lactans, 15th c. Oil. Cook collection

Cindy Sherman   (b. 1954)

Untitled #225 (History Portraits), 1990. Chromogenic color print, 122 x 84 cm. Edition of 6. Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures

[art-collecteur]

Maria lactans. Das Jesuskind säugende Hl. Maria mit Krone und Robe an einer Fensterbrüstung stehend , ca. 1490

Circle of Robert Boyvin

[zenlesszonezero]

Join Zenless Zone Zero with Tsukishiro Yanagi, the deputy leader of Hollow Special Operations Section 6! Beneath her ordinary office lady exterior lies a meticulous, emotionally intelligent big sister to the team.

[rijksmuseum-art]

Virgin and Child (Madonna Lactans), 1500, Museum of the Netherlands

Maria met het kind aan de borst, ten halven lijve voor een draperie van goudbrokaat.

[nsfwbible]

‘She bared the breast of mercy to all men’

In a legend that arose long after the death of Bernard of Clairvaux in 1153, the Virgin Mary appears to the saint and shares with him drops of her holy breast milk.

“She bared the breast of mercy to all men so that they might all receive of its abundance, and so that the captive might be granted Redemption; the ailing, health; the afflicted, comfort; the sinner, forgiveness,” Bernard wrote in one sermon. “Feed your poor today, our Lady; and give us to drink from your over-abundant pitcher.”

The image here is a detail from a painting at the Monastery of Santa Maria do Lorvão in Portugal.

[taunuswolf]

Bild: Natur in Hülle und Fülle, aber die Spessarter machen nichts draus

Manchmal möchte man laut „Sch……“ brüllen!

Wandern im Spessart - Wenn Natur und Wanderer zu Feinden werden. Trauriges Fazit: 90 Prozent meiner 40 Kilometer langen Tour von Langenprozelten nach Bad Orb gingen über hart geschotterte Waldstraßen, Teer und sogar Betonwege. Die restlichen zehn Prozent habe ich mir erschlichen, weil ich von markierten Wegen abwich.

Der Spessart gehört der Holzindustrie. Sie hat dieses größte Mischwaldgebiet Deutschland mit einem dichten Netz von hart befestigten Waldstraßen durchzogen. Oder besser gesagt verschandelt. Weiche Pfade sind eine Rarität und werden wie zwischen Lohrhaupten und Lettgenbrunn von Jagdpächtern okkupiert. Auf diese Weise sind schon viele, vormals ausgezeichnete Wanderwege, spurlos verschwunden. Teilweise sogar zugewachsen. Ein ehemaliger Fernwanderweg der früher Lettgenbrunn mit Bad Orb verband, führt heute unbeschildert durch einen Golfplatz. Das Weiterwandern auf einer Autobahnähnlichen harten Piste, die ein wenig an den Raubbau im Amazonasgebiet erinnert, ist reine Glückssache. Wahrscheinlich soll hier ein Windpark entstehen. Nicht einmal einen Grünstreifen mit Sträuchern für Vögel haben die „Kettensägenhelden“ übriggelassen. Biotopschutz geht anders und Nachhaltigkeit allemal. Im Spessart tobt deutlich sichtbar ein Krieg gegen die Natur, die nur noch als Rohstofflieferant dient.  Bereits beim letzten Mal habe ich mich an dieser Stelle tüchtig verlaufen. Lange Rede kurzer Sinn: Wanderer sind im Spessart unerwünscht. Sie bringen zu wenig Profit. Es gibt kaum Lokale, Pensionen oder Übernachtungsmöglichkeiten, zum Beispiel bewirtschaftete Hütten, wie im Pfälzer Wald. Einige Ausflugslokale sind längst aufgegeben, andere stehen vor dem aus. Die Beschilderungen sind teilweise katastrophal. Das bestätigen selbst heimische Wanderer, die vergeblich gegen sture Bürokratie, bornierte Ortsbürgermeister, konkurrierende Vereine, Schotterpisten und Windräder ankämpfen.

Einer dieser hart geschotterten Wege führt von Langenprozelten nach Rieneck. Nach knapp acht Kilometern und noch mal einen durch den beschaulichen Ort endlich Waldboden unter den Füßen! „Fränkischer Marienweg“ heißt der romantische steile, tief in den Wald führende Steig. Weitere Ausschilderung: Rengersbrunn, Rotes und „weißes Kreuz“. Ich denke sofort an „Rammstein“ und fang schon mal an zu singen. „Asche zu Asche-Staub zu Staub!“ Meine gute Laune verflüchtigt sich bereits nach zwei Kilometer. Was auf meiner Wanderkarte noch als idyllischer Waldweg entlang des Spessartkammes eingezeichnet ist, wurde inzwischen zur Holzabfuhrstraße ausgebaut. Und die ist auch noch wegen „Baumfällarbeiten“ komplett gesperrt. Ich fühle mich verarscht. Habe mich gerade 150 Höhenmeter nach oben gequält. Zurück ins Tal? Einen Riesenumweg laufen? Nach zwölf Kilometern hat man für solche bürokratischen Spielchen, die mit etwas Achtsamkeit und einem kleinen Schlenker leicht zu lösen sind, kein Verständnis mehr. Also weiter in Richtung Rengersbrunn. Ganze drei Kilometer kein einziger Holzfäller weit und breit. Dann fast am Ende der Sperrung, vier Stämme am Wegrand (die vor Stunden gefällt wurden) und zwei Holzfäller, die breitbeinig im Weg stehen mich wie Dorf-Cherifs dumm von der Seite anmachen, ob ich das Schild nicht gelesen hätte. Keinen „Guten Tag“ oder „Wo geht’s denn hin?“  So geht man im Spessart mit den wenigen Kurzurlaubern um. Und ich bin sicher kein Einzelfall. Sonst würden – wie zum Beispiel im Pfälzer Wald – hier viel mehr Leute durch die Föhren streifen.

Also was bleibt? Sicherlich, das manchmal schaurig schöne oder gar beklemmende Gefühl viele Stunden durch menschenleeres, einsames Gebiet zu laufen, vorbei an alten bemoosten steinernen Wegkreuzen oder Gedenksteinen. Durch klitzekleine Dörfer mit relativ großen schmucken Barockkirchen und nicht sehr kommunikativen Menschen. Zum Beispiel Rengersbrunn, das „Lourdes des Spessarts“. Neben der Wallfahrtskirche eine Sandstein-Madonna, deren Brüste Wasser spenden. Ein Warnschild – kein Trinkwasser – hat fast Symbolcharakter. Marias Brüste schöpfen aus dem vollen, aber die Bewohner wissen mit dem köstlichen Nass - reines Quellwasser, aus dem schon Barbarossa trank – nichts anzufangen. Was für ein frustrierendes Gefühl für einen Pilger, wenn er nach zwanzig Kilometer Fußmarsch vor so einem Schild steht.  Dabei braucht nur hin und wieder jemand vom Wasserwerk kommen und die Qualität kontrollieren. So wie das oft an den Wald-Quellen von Großstädten geschieht. Warum klappt das in Rengersbrunn nicht? Der Spessart könnte mehr aus sich machen. So verkümmert er immer mehr zum Rohstofflieferant und Durchgangsgebiet für Verkehrsströme…  

Klaus Lelek

[magica-pseudoacademica]

Christianity - Articles

Last edited 2020-05-14

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* Cianci, Eleonora. “Maria lactans and the Three Good Brothers: The German Tradition of the Charm and Its Cultural Context.” Incantatio 2 (2012): 55-70.

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[benozzo-gozzoli]

Tabernacle of the Madonna delle Tosse: Maria lactans (detail), 1484, Benozzo Gozzoli

Medium: fresco

https://www.wikiart.org/en/benozzo-gozzoli/tabernacle-of-the-madonna-delle-tosse-maria-lactans-detail