A different Madonna

Every day at 5pm my smartphone ‘pings’ and the DailyArt app sends me an image of an artwork – ‘my daily dose of art’. A couple of weeks ago, the ‘featured picture’ was the Virgin and Child Surrounded by Angels panel in the Melun diptych (c. 1452) by Jean Fouquet which is now in Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp.

This curious depiction of the Melun Virgin reminded me of the painting of the Virgin and Child (c. 1465-1475) by Simon Marmion in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria. Coincidentally, I had just watched comedian, Hannah Gadsby, on Netflix in her recent show ‘Douglas’. In this show, Gadsby provides a brief lecture on art history and one of the images she examines is of St Bernard of Clairvaus and the Virgin. What all three artworks have in common is the very obvious focus on the exposed breast of the Virgin and this raised the question: what sort of ‘breast’ did viewer’s see when they saw the Virgin’s bared breast?

There have been a variety of views on the Virgin Mary from the beginning of Christianity. Over the centuries Marian theology has been shaped by many forces ranging from sensus fidelium, to apparitions of the Madonna, to the writings of saints and theologians, to papal encyclicals.

Beginning in the latter half of the 2^nd century, the early Church fathers (led by St Justin the Martyr) started to draw parallels between Eve and Mary, with Mary being seen as the ‘new Eve’ who did not challenge God but accepted His will. In this role, Mary was deemed to be a compassionate mediator between suffering mankind and her son, Jesus, who was acknowledged as King and Judge.

During the late Middle Ages, the Virgin was often depicted as the ‘Madonna of Humility’ – seated on the ground (or low cushion) and holding the Christ Child in her lap. This more humble and ordinary depiction encouraged easier and greater identification with the Virgin which helped promote her role as an intercessor between earth and heaven. Sometimes these images would have the Virgin with a breast exposed.

Painting a bare-breasted Madonna is known as the ‘Madonna lactans’, when the Christ child is present, or ‘Lactatio Bernadi’ when the picture features Saint Bernard of Clairvaux. This iconography dates back to at least the time of Pope Gregory 6^th century and one of the earliest surviving examples is a mosaic from the 13^th century on the façade of Santa Maria Trastevere in Rome. However, this depiction of the Virgin increased significantly during the early Renaissance.

The Madonna lactans image is governed by standard conventions with respect to the manner in which the bare breast can be depicted – it is partially covered by the Virgin’s veil; it is displaced upwards to beneath her collarbone; it is ‘detached’ from her body; and its size and shape are distorted so that it is anatomically incorrect. All these features ensure that the breast is seen as a ‘vehicle’ of connection rather than as an object of sexual interest. The painting by Marmion (which is extensively described elsewhere by Fiona Clarke) provides a clear indication of the required format. Other similar examples are by Rogier van der Weyden and Hans Memling (above).

The size of the Marmion painting suggests that it was a private devotional image which would have created a specific mindset in the individual who was using it to reflect on the humanity and humility of the Mother of God. Particular prayers were even written for this situation.  An example cited from ‘Disrobing the Virgin: The Madonna Lactans in Fifteenth Century Florentine Art’ by Megan Holmes is:

Milk has several meanings in the Bible. It is a sign of abundance (Genesis), it is used in blessings (Isaiah), it is the spiritual food of ‘unaware’ people providing them with nourishment, nurturing and growth (Corinthians) and it denotes purity (Peter). Milk was also understood as ‘processed blood’, and the milk of the Virgin to some extent paralleled the role of the Blood of Christ. The image of the Madonna lactans could connect with any of these ideas. However, its primary function was more fundamental and visceral, and related to early life sustaining experiences which everyone could relate to and accordingly would promote the belief that life would then continue after death.

As the lactans motif continued into the 15^th and 16^th centuries, artists moved away from the stylisation described above, and the depiction of mother and infant became more naturalistic and accessible. A late 15^th century example is the Madonna Litta attributed to Leonardo da Vinci in the Hermitage Museum, and an early 16^th century version is Madonna of the Green Cushion (c. 1507) by Andrea Solario in the Louvre.

During the Renaissance, as physical representations from antiquity were explored, more overtly erotic images of the Virgin appeared – see for example, Madonna with the Parrots (1533) by Hans Baldung.  Accordingly, after the Council of Trent in the mid-16^th century, clerical writers discouraged nudity in religious subjects, and the Madonna lactans image became much less common.

The Melun Diptych presents a much more sexualized vision of the bare-breasted Madonna. This is no longer the ‘Madonna of Humility’ but rather the Madonna lactans as ‘Queen of Heaven’. In this painting, the Virgin was believed to be modelled on Agnès Sorel, mistress of King Charles VII of France, and known by the soubriquet Dame de beauté (Lady of Beauty). Sorel was the first officially recognised royal mistress and gave birth to four daughters fathered by the king. She also created significant scandal at the court for popularising the fashion of low-cut gowns which the Archbishop of Reims described as: ouvertures de par devant, par lesquelles on voit les tetins, tettes et seing des femmes. Sorel died shortly after the birth of her fourth child at the age of 28 – two years before the painting by Fouquet. While her death was attributed to dysentery, it has been recently suggested she died from mercury poisoning.

In the painting, Fouquet has the Madonna surrounded by Seraphim and Cherubim (see the previous post on ‘Angelology’) seated on an elaborate throne wearing her customary blue dress with white veil and bearing a jewel-encrusted crown. The Christ Child sits on her lap and gestures to St Stephen and Étienne Chevalier (executor of Sorel’s estate and commissioner of the picture) who are on the other panel which is not shown.

Painted in pale, almost alabaster-like skin tones, Sorel, is depicted as sensual, ethereal and otherworldly. As she looks down over the top of her large, perfectly spherical breast toward her child, it is clear that she, rather than the baby, is the focal point of the picture. From today’s perspective, with our awareness of cosmetic surgery, it looks like she has opted for inappropriate implants. As a design for a devotional picture, it seems positively scandalous. However, according to both the court chronicler Chastellain, and Enea Silvio Piccolomini (later Pope Pius II), Sorel had rendered valuable service to the crown before her premature death and was later eulogised in verse by King Francis I (1494-1547). It is unlikely that contemporaneous worshippers would have considered it blasphemous to cast this deceased royal mistress as the Virgin Mary.

The other common depiction of the bare-breasted Madonna is in the ‘Lactation of St Bernard’ – the art described by Hannah Gadsby. In these paintings, St Bernard of Clairvaux is shown kneeling in front of the Virgin who holds the infant Christ while she squirts milk from her breast into the saint’s mouth.

St Bernard was born at the end of the 11^th century and was a gifted preacher, theologian and key reformer of the Cistercian order. He is said to have attained his great wisdom from the event depicted in the painting. While praying and kneeling before an image of the Virgin the saint had a vision where she ‘fed’ him with her milk. The taking in of her milk being symbolic of the Virgin becoming his ‘mother’ (and by extension the mother of mankind), curing him of sin, and granting him wisdom. As this image was associated with hagiography, it was a more enduring representation of the bare-breasted Madonna and was still being painted in the Baroque and Rococo periods.

With the increased interest in the representation of women’s bodies, as part of Gender Studies, there have been a number of writers who have explored the symbolism of the bare-breasted Virgin.  As well as Megan Holmes (cited above), recent essays are found at: ‘The Virgin’s Peculiar Breast: Negotiating Nudity in Devotional Paintings’ by Nancy Yakimosi in Illumine vol. 1 no.1, 2001-02; ‘A Complex Delight: The Secularization of the Breast, 1350-1750’ by Margaret Miles (and others), University of California Press, 2008; and‘The Madonna of Humility: Development, Dissemination and Reception, c. 1340-1400’ by Beth Williamson, Boydell Press, 2009.

While these images are curious to our 21st century eyes, they would have been easily understood and appreciated by the intended audience of their day.