Virgin and Child with the Milk Soup After Gerard David: Series of Paintings on the Same Theme After Known Models

Chapter 7 Virgin and Child with the Milk Soup after Gerard David: Series of Paintings on the Same Theme after Known Models

Catheline Périer-D’Ieteren

1 Introduction

This text follows on from a preliminary article dedicated to two versions of the Virgin and Child with the Milk Soup: one in a private collection in Brussels, heavily restored by Jef Van der Veken (Fig. 7.1), and the other in the Strasbourg Fine Arts Museum (Fig. 7.2). The latter constitutes one of the two known pro- totypes for this series of small paintings produced in Bruges. The aim of this second article is to explore the lesser-known versions of this theme, to do a comparative study of these versions, and to examine the sty- listic impact of well-known artists from Bruges such as Gerard David, Adrien Isenbrant and Ambrosius Benson on the production of these copies. The theme of the Virgin and Child with the Milk Soup breaks with the hierat- ic representations of the Virgin and Child typical in fifteenth-century Flemish painting by introducing a new type of composition: that of a young mother engaging in the quotidian activity of feeding her child. This humanization of the traditional sacred subject, which was also adopted in early-sixteenth century Antwerp by Quentin Metsijs and Joos van Cleve in paintings of the Virgin and Child and the Holy Family, seeks to arouse the empathy of the viewer, bringing him closer to the divine figures. This new trend, whose roots originat- ed in the ideas of the Devotio Moderna,1 explains the enormous success of the theme. It also contains a symbolic message of Salvation and Redemption—

1 The Devotio Moderna is a spiritual current developed at the end of the fourteenth century in the ancient Low Countries. It seeks to insert the divine message within the everyday and thus incite meditation. The De Imitatione Christi by Thomas à Kempis, taking these prin- ciples and aiming to make spiritual life accessible to all, won great success with the secular. See: Regnerus R. Post, The Modern Devotion. Confrontation with Reformation and Humanism. E.J. Brill, 1968.

Figure 7.1 Copy after Gerard David, Virgin and Child with the Milk Soup. 1510–20, private collection, Brussels © IRPA-KIK, Bruxelles the image of the Virgin feeding the Child evokes that of Christ offering his body and blood for Humanity.2

2 For the detailed study of the numerous symbolically charged motifs in this treatment of the subject, which illustrate both the religious fervour of the day and probably that of the patron, see Maryan W. Ainsworth, Gerard David. Purity of Vision in an Age of Transition. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1998, 303–308. For the hypothesis of a Lombard origin of the theme at a time when Italian art was very popular, see the same article, 301–303.