Day 412 - Memling Madonna and Child


 April 21, 2025

Gallery 635 catapults me back into the 15th century and even earlier. It's another example of the unintelligible system for numbering galleries that the Met has adopted. But one could also say that my insistence on visiting galleries in numerical order is equally crazy. (I think that's the first time I've acknowledged this possibility!)  The gallery contains many small painted panels depicting religious scenes, along with small painted crosses and a remarkable small bronze plaque showing the entombment of Christ that was meant to be held in the hands. (That supremely ugly head of John the Baptist on a platter that I wrote about on Day 231 has found its way here as well.) "Oh, a gallery of objects for private devotion" is my immediate reaction, and I wonder if I would have had the same response when I began this project. I think not, and I realize how much I've learned. The works come from Italy, Burgundy, and the Low Countries, and many are by painters who are well known today - Memling, Mabuse, Gerard David. It's interesting to think that these artists, whom I know for their altarpieces and larger paintings, were commissioned to make these smaller works as well. I wonder who their patrons were - nobles? Members of the rising bourgeoisie?

Today's object is a lovely small Memling tondo ("roundel" is the term the Met wall sign uses) of the Madonna nursing the infant Jesus.  Made around 1475-1480,  it measures only about 8 inches in diameter but is full of detail. The sign notes that images of this kind were very popular and were often hung over the heads of beds to bless the marital couple and as a focus for prayer.  I imagine that many women prayed for fertility and for the birth of a healthy child. The expression on the faces of both mother and infant is one of serenity, and this mood is reinforced by the blues and greens of the wooded landscape and sky against which the mother and child are set. (The painting is set inside a case, so unfortunately, the colors in my photo are more muted than in the work itself.)

I note how young the Virgin looks, how full her breast, and how natural it was for painters of the period to depict her nursing; there is nothing prurient about these representations. I wonder when breasts became so fetishized.


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