The piece of the month of September 2011

"THE VIRGIN COMFORTING SAINT BERNARD" BEFORE THE VISION OF THE CISTERCIAN NUN BERNARDA BEA
 

Maria Josefa Tarifa Castilla
 

The Navarre monastery of Nuestra Señora de la Caridad de Tulebras, the first foundation of the Hispanic female Cistercian Order, has among its varied artistic heritage a series of pictorial works, some dedicated to saints of the Order, such as this painting of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux depicting one of the most transcendental passages of his life, the miraculous episode in which the Virgin Mary comforts him with her milk.

A baroque canvas of popular and naive style, but which presents the peculiarity of showing in the lower right corner a Cistercian nun in smaller size and kneeling, which appears identified with the registration "Dª BERNARDA BEA" and that refers to the abbess of the same name, native of Magallón, who governed the destinies of this Navarrese monastery between the years 1833-1837 and 1845-1849, therefore a canvas that was retouched a posteriori. A difficult time for the religious community, since with the disentailment of Mendizábal they lost all their properties in 1837, disastrous consequences that were also felt especially in the Library Services, the file and the decoration of some dependencies, although Mother Bernarda managed to save the monastery from the exclaustration, so that the community remained in Tulebras, being the only redoubt of Cistercian life that remained in Navarre, even welcoming some religious of the extinct monastery of Trasobares (Zaragoza). 

Bernarda Bea had a reputation for holiness in the monastery, as recorded in the chronicle of the monastery El Espejo del santo y real monasterio de Tulebras, in the annotations of the chaplain Luis Gómara: "She was a soul of much prayer, simple and recollected, and as God communicates to the simple and humble, they say she had visions and revelations, and they saw them to be true because she told them news about their families that could not be known except by revelation; and she also had raptures, because several times they saw her lifted from the ground". 

A few years before her election as abbess, in 1830 St. Bernard was proclaimed Doctor of the Church, the "Melifluous Doctor", so perhaps on the occasion of this event, so significant for the Cistercian nun, as well as for the fervor she professed towards this saint of the Order, Bernarda called a painter and had herself portrayed in this baroque painting of the Lactatio in the foreground, taking part in the miracle, without defined features but perfectly identified by the registration that accompanies her, together with her heraldic emblem that hangs from the front of the altar table, in whose interior the initials B/A were placed.
 

"The Virgin comforting St. Bernard". Monastery of Tulebras
 

The subject of the painting refers to the Miracle of the Milk, according to which, when Saint Bernard was praying before an image of the Virgin suckling the Child in the church of Saint Vorles, in Chatillon-sur-Seine, he asked for financial aid and help to the Lady with the words monstra te esse Matrem, and at that moment the Marian sculpture became animated and the Virgin, pressing her breast, made some drops of milk jump on the lips of the monk who was parched from having sung her praises. An iconography that has its origin in the Virgin of milk, belonging to the cycle of the infancy of Christ, - which originates in the first moments of Christian art, around the fourth century, with a wide development in the Age average and Renaissance - that is, the Virgin as the nourishing soul of God that provides the physical food for the upbringing of the Child Jesus, which will be transformed over time in more elaborate compositions, understanding the milk as synonymous with the graces of the Mother of God to believers. 

The pictorial representation of the Lactation of St. Bernard, was an iconography that had a wide diffusion in the Baroque, because it transmitted very well the religious feelings of the moment, highlighting the love of St. Bernard for the Mother of God, at a time when the Protestants attacked the cult of the saints and the Virgin. This narration, in which the miracle and the supernatural event coexist with the natural, and where the line between the divine and the human is very tenuous, connected perfectly with the baroque religiosity, as reflected in the painting of Tulebras, made of agreement to the traditional iconography and in which the Virgin no longer sample the bare breast, but decorously hidden under the pinkish tunic, from agreement with the Tridentine dictates, as expressed by Cardinal Federico Borromeo (1563-1631), Archbishop of Milan and the Mercedarian Fray Juan Interián de Ayala, a scene with which the maternal feeling of the Virgin Mary is exalted. 

The canvas follows the usual compositional outline in this Bernardo iconography, with Mary and the Child located on the upper right side of the painting floating in a sky of clouds and accompanied by winged cherub heads, directing their gaze to the Cistercian saint who prays before her kneeling on the ground while receiving the precious nourishing gift, a trickle of milk that comes from the hidden breast of the Virgin, giving the composition a descending rhythm.
 

Vita et miracvla divi Bernardi Clarevalensis abbatis Opera e industria. Rome, 1587.
Stamp no. 19
 

The engraved source that inspired this work was surely one of the engravings of the life and miracles of St. Bernard Vita et miracula divi Bernardi Clarevalensis abbatis. Opera e industria, like nº 19 published in Rome in 1587 under the sponsorship of Jerónimo Rusticucio, cardinal and protector of the Spanish Cistercian order, -although today it is thought that the promoter of this great business publishing house was Fray Bernardo Gutiérrez- whose models are due to the invention of Antonio Tempesta. However, the artist could also have based his work on other illustrations that accompany the life and miracles of the saint of Clavaral and that exemplify the apparitions of the Virgin to Saint Bernard, corresponding to numbers 23, 24 and 25 of the work of 1653 that saw the light in Antwerp under the degree scroll Sancti Bernardi mellifui doctoris ecclesiae pulcherrima et exemplaris vitae medulla.

Saint Bernard is clearly identifiable by his attributes, dressed in the white collar of the Order with long sleeves, tonsure in the form of a crown, the crosier that he holds between his arms united in prayer to the Mother of God and two mitres placed in the foreground on the floor as a symbol of his rejection on several occasions of the episcopal dignity, as appears, for example, in the panel of the same topic of the main altarpiece of the monastery of Fitero by Rolan Moys (1590-1591). The miraculous event takes place in an interior space, in which the celestial environment, represented by a luminous golden atmosphere wrapped in cottony clouds occupied by the Virgin and Child, is framed on the left by a greenish background curtain that limits the depth of the room and on the right in the foreground by a table on which an open book is placed.

In the lower right corner of the painting the abbess, represented in smaller size, witnesses the miracle kneeling and with praying hands in front of her chest, directing her gaze towards Saint Bernard, dressed in the white cowl with wide sleeves that hang down to the floor, which is the most significant monastic garment and which is used exclusively in church and chapter meetings, under which is hidden the white habit with black scapular, covering her head with a black veil and hanging from her neck the beads of the rosary, in the line of other paintings of Cistercian nuns like the abbess Francisca Manrique (1570-1582) in the chapel of Our Lady of Bethlehem in the monastery of Las Huelgas in Burgos or the exceptional painting by Angelo Nardi of Saint Humbelina (1620).


bibliography
Vita et miracvla divi Bernardi Clarevalensis abbatis Opera e industria. Congregationis regularis observantiae eiusdem hispaniorum ad alendam Pietatem Universi Ordinis Cisterciensis, Rome, Marcelii Clodii, 1587.

COLOMBÁS, G.M., Monasterio de Tulebras, Pamplona, Government of Navarra, 1987.

Réau, L., Iconography of Christian Art. Iconography of the saints. A - F, t. 2, vol. 3, Barcelona, Ediciones del Serbal, 2000, pp. 213-219.