Maria Lactans. Bruges School Around 1600

Oil on panel, arched at the top. Bruges School, late 16th or early 17th century.
It is in front of a verdant plain stretching towards a vaporous horizon that our painter invites the viewer into the intimacy of a maternity scene. In this gentle representation, the Virgin delicately leans her head towards her son who is about to take her breast. The latter, his gaze turned towards invisible distances, seems absent while his mother is dressed in a certain melancholy. Are they already considering the many torments to come? Despite its sacred character, the tenderness emanating from this scene anchors it in daily life and allows each believer to project themselves into it. This iconography echoes the dual nature of Christ, both divine and human, and recalls the nourishing and protective role of the Virgin, extended to all of humanity.
Arousing spontaneous piety, this work retains a share of medieval sensibility, which was seamlessly succeeded by the Northern Renaissance. And it is more precisely in the artistic hearth of the city of Bruges that we situate the production of our painting. The observer will detect the influences of the 15th-century painters who made it famous, first and foremost Hans Memling, Gérard David, and the Brabançon Petrus Christus, who made his career there.
The small-format representations of the Virgin and maternity scenes such as the Virgin and Child or Maria Lactans (also called the Breastfeeding Virgin) were very successful in the context of devotio moderna. These paintings were a support for private devotion, intended to support, through contemplation, the meditation of the faithful.

The French frame in carved and gilded oak from the Louis XIV period highlights our painting in its majesty.
Dimensions: 41.5 x 32 cm - 56 x 48 cm with frame

Bibliography:
- Collective work, Bruges and the Renaissance, from Memling to Pourbus, Catalogue of the Bruges exhibition (08 to 12.1998), Notices Le Ludion, 1998.
- TILL-HOLGER BORCHER, The Flemish Primitives in Bruges, Ludion, 2019.
- KOOPSTRA, Anna, Hans Memling in Bruges, Hannibal, 2023.
- VAN MIERGROET, Hans J, Gérard David, Antwerp, Fonds Mercator, 1989.
- AINSWORTH, Maryan Wynn (dir.), Gerard David: Purity of Vision in an Age of Transition, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1998.
- AINSWORTH, Maryan Wynn (dir.), From Van Eyck to Bruegel: Early Netherlandish Painting in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, (exhibit cat. New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, September 22, 1998 - January 3, 1999), H.N. Abrams, 1998.
- REAU, Louis, Iconography of Christian Art, 3 vols. Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1958.