The Virgin of Humility with Angels and Donor
Unknown Italian Master
c. 1360
Tempera on panel, 69 x 57 cm
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Thank you for the great gallery of Christian art. I am by education an Art Historian and am continually embarrassed by how little most Christians know about the 2000 years of strong Christian art that exists in the world.
St. Bernard of Clairvaux was praying before a statue of the Virgin and Child, and exclaimed, "Demonstrate that you are a Mother!" Whereupon the statue came alive and expressed milk that fell on St. Bernard's lips --
The people of the Middle Ages didn't have the same shrinking from natural bodily functions that we have inherited from the Victorians. . . . and they also didn't have the strident insistence on them that the La Leche League/hippy types have . . . . a nice, happy medium. I think it comes from all of them being closer to the land than we are.
I worked on a dairy farm one summer, and some time back I had showed my daughter how you milk a cow. She is doing a biology field studies program in Costa Rica, and they toured a dairy farm yesterday -- the farmer let the biology students try to milk a cow (mostly so they could laugh at the city slickers, I'm sure!) and daughter was the only one who was able to get milk out of said cow. She was SO proud that the farmer complimented her. No knowledge is ever wasted!