MEDIEVAL IMAGES OF SAINT BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX - PA084.jpg

Category Painting
Origin: artist/workshop attributed to Jean Bellegambe (active 1504-34)
Date 16C/1
Reference No Inv 1970.34
Size 48.5x33.5
Provenance Flines Cistercian Nuns' Abbey
Present Location Pittsburgh, The Collection of the Frick Art & Historical Center
Bibliography Heller 1976, 176

Friedlaender 1924-37, 12:XVI; Pearson 2001, 1362-5
Illustration From photo - Museum
Other illustrations Pearson 2001, ill 6

Country France
Description:
A small diptych commissioned by Abbess Jeanne de Boubais (1507-33), one of several attributed to Jean Bellegambe, another being the large triptych, the so-called Retable de Cellier (see PA87 & 88). The inside has the Virgin with the Child playing with a string of beads on the left, and, on the right a nimbed Bernard carrying a crozier in his left hand and with his right hand on the shoulder of a kneeling monk with his hands clasped in prayer, identified as the influential confessor of the Flines community, Guillaume de Bruxelles, who in 1506 was sent by Abbot Jean Foucault of Clairvaux, the father-abbot of Flines, and who together with de Boubais carried through an extensive reform programme. Abbess de Boubais is featured on the outside panel, kneeling before an altar with clasped hands and carrying a crozier. The ciborium on the altar containing the consecrated Host testifies to the importance of Eucharistic devotion in Cistercian women's houses and the open book from which she is reading to the central part played by the 'lectio divina'. Bernard has a 'tuft'.