| This tiny triptych, painted on parchment on oak panels in the workshop of Simon Bening in Bruges in 1515-19, was typical of the work of the highest quality of the miniaturists working in Bruges and Ghent at the time, both on manuscripts and small devotional panels. The central panel shows the Virgin with Child with two musician angels at her feet and surrounded by seven medallions illustrating the Seven Joys of the Virgin in minutest detail. The left panel depicts the Lactation. The Virgin sits in front of an altar with closed retable. She holds the naked Child with her left hand and bares her breast with the right. Bernard kneels before her with his crozier resting on his right shoulder and holding a book from which he is reading with both hands. The church interior in the background shows the transept and the choir stalls and two Cistercian monks in white cowls are conversing at the far end. A statue of St Peter is high up above one of the pillars. The right wing depicts the Virgin miraculously placing a chasuble over the head of St Ildephonsus, archbishop of Toledo, thus completing his episcopal vestments as he is already wearing the dalmatic. The wings of this retable are open, and two saints are depicted, St Peter and possibly Charlemagne. Bernard has been identified as an abbot portrait of Peter van Onderberghen of Les Dunes 1515-19 who commissioned the triptych, hence the statue of St Peter, in the same way as another Lactation picture, also attributed to Bening, shows Bernard as a portrait of Abbot Peter's immediate predecessor, Jan Teirlinck (1509-15), together with a statue of St John, in a miniature in a manuscript. The subjects of the two wings suggest a Cistercian and also a Spanish connection. The Spanish connection may refer to Abbot Peter's mission to Barcelona in 1519 when he represented Flanders at the election of the Spanish king, Charles V, as Roman Emperor. That may also explain why the triptych belonged to the King of Naples up to the nineteenth century.
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