Milk and Miracles

Heteroglossia and Dissent in Venetian Religious Art after the Council of Trent

Bibliographic Data

ID12448293
AuthorsJutta Sperling (Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts), Jutta Gisela Sperling (Amherst College, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume51
Issue2
Pages285-319
Publication date2021-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1082-9636 • E-ISSN: 1527-8263
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/10829636-8929073
OpenAlexW3164374222
LanguageEN
Citations received2

This essay investigates Benedetto Caliari's Nativity of the Virgin (1576) with its provocative and unorthodox depiction of a bare-breasted wet-nurse in the context of both Protestant and Catholic criticism of “indecent” religious imagery. Reformers on both sides drew a connection between the Virgin Mary's ostentatious display of her lactating breasts and her presumed, derided, or hoped-for miracle-working capacities or intercessory powers. In post-Tridentine Venice, several artists, including Tintoretto and Veronese, all of whom were connected to the Scuola de’ Mercanti that commissioned Caliari's painting, employed religious breastfeeding imagery in a wide array of iconographies in order to express dissent with the Counter-Reformation church's emphasis on orthodoxy. In contrast to writers, artists were able to claim a certain degree of nonconformity and freedom from prosecution. In light of Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of heteroglossia, it is argued that religious lactation imagery after Trent produced irony, parody, doubt, and dissent

Art · Context (archaeology · Counter-Reformation · Dissent · Heteroglossia · Literature · Miracle · Nonconformity · Political science · Politics · Protestantism · Theology · Early Modern Women Writers · History · Law · Philosophy · Religious studies · Renaissance and Early Modern Studies · Renaissance Literature and Culture

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