After recovering from the Curtius Museum’s brief mention in very tiny letters that the ancestors who settled in the Liége region were the victims of Roman genocide, I lingered looking at Merovingian oddments and Carolingian carvings. When it came to wood, those altar adorning Northern Europeans knew a thing or two.
And they banged out some baptismal fonts that you could float your baby in.
And bound Bibles in covers that could sink a ship.
Not to mention coming up with graphic portrayals of the Liége Saint Lambert being, if paintings are to be believed, dramatically assassinated in church with blade swinging bravado.
I mean, if you’re going to kill a priest at the altar there’s no sense being stealthy about it. Take the sacred stage and make a martyr out of a man!
It was clear that I was approaching a part of the exhibit that was going to offer some Baroque weirdness. And sure enough, there were the “lactation paintings.” They concern Bernard of Clairvaux receiving a stream of milk from the breast of the Virgin Mary.
From van Eyck to Magritte I’ve relayed how I’m a sucker for over-the-top symbolism, and the lactation paintings are no exception. According to medieval tradition, Bernie was praying before an image of Mary and recited the words, “Show yourself to be a mother.” Mary then squirted him in the face. Take that you doubting pedant!