MEDIEVAL IMAGES OF SAINT BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX - PA007.jpg


Category	Painting
Origin: artist/workshop	Master of the Muenster Death of St Nicholas or Lower Rhine Master
Date	15C/4
Reference No
Size	75.3x59.4
Provenance	Cologne/Lower Rhineland
Present Location	private collection - Collection Steinmetz
Bibliography	Stange 1951-61, 6:51-4; Cologne 1970, 140-1
	Cologne 2001, 336; Eberbach 2003, 74-5
Illustration From	photo - owner
Other illustrations	Stange 1951-61, 6:ill 91; Paris 1991, ill 18
	Cologne 2001, 337; Eberbach 2003, 74
Country	Germany

Description:
By the artist known as the Master of the Death of St Nicholas painted c 1478 - his altarpiece with St Nicholas and St George was his earliest work. He is also sometimes known as the Lower Rhine Master. The date of this Lactation painting - 1478 - is given in the middle at the bottom. Stange mistakenly refers to it as representing the Virgin with a Carthusian monk, but it is unmistakably a Lactation scene with St Bernard and the customary 'Monstra te esse matrem' scroll. A crowned Virgin holds the naked Child resting on an embroidered cushion lying on a table or sill in the forefront with her left hand while her riight hand is on her breast. The half-figure of Bernard with a youthful face kneels behind the table with his hands folded in prayer and a crozier resting on his shoulder under his left arm. The scene is in a room with a window in the background and a landscape scene with a church, either the abbey church for which the painting was made or Bernard's church of Clairvaux. A purse book lies on the table. Bernard has 'tuft'. The painting was the model for a later engraving (see EN023).

Description:

By the artist known as the Master of the Death of St Nicholas painted c 1478 - his altarpiece with St Nicholas and St George was his earliest work. He is also sometimes known as the Lower Rhine Master. The date of this Lactation painting - 1478 - is given in the middle at the bottom. Stange mistakenly refers to it as representing the Virgin with a Carthusian monk, but it is unmistakably a Lactation scene with St Bernard and the customary 'Monstra te esse matrem' scroll. A crowned Virgin holds the naked Child resting on an embroidered cushion lying on a table or sill in the forefront with her left hand while her riight hand is on her breast. The half-figure of Bernard with a youthful face kneels behind the table with his hands folded in prayer and a crozier resting on his shoulder under his left arm. The scene is in a room with a window in the background and a landscape scene with a church, either the abbey church for which the painting was made or Bernard's church of Clairvaux. A purse book lies on the table. Bernard has 'tuft'. The painting was the model for a later engraving (see EN023).