The Lactation of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, ca. 1525 - ca. 1540

The Lactation of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux is probably painted by a Ghent master. It tells one of the many anecdotes and legends that circulated around the figure of St Bernard (1090-1153) during his lifetime and in the course of the late Middle Ages. Here, the lactation is presented: Mary is said to have appeared to Bernard, a Benedictine monk, founder and abbot of Clervaux Abbey, and to have squirted a jet of breast milk on his lips. The scene symbolises the intimate relationship between Mary and the saint, represented here in a chapel of the Cistercian abbey of Sinaai, half a century before its destruction. The bench on which Mary sits and a cushion in the choir stool behind Bernard bear the coat of arms of the patron, the twenty-sixth abbot of the Baudelo abbey of Sinaai, Jan van Deynse. On his initiative, a new abbey was built in Ghent, between Ottogracht and Baudelohof, as a place of refuge.