The gate of the year

Fresco of the beginning of 1400s, attributed to the Master of Signa, in the Church of Saint Lawrence at Ponte a Greve, Florence. The image represents the so-called Madonna del Latte (“Our Lady of the Milk”), that is the Virgin Mary suckling the little child Jesus.
The iconography is clearly inspired to the images of the goddess Isis suckling the child Horus, widely spread in Antiquity. In fact, the first pictures of the Virgin Mary in this guise are found just in Christianized Egypt, since the VI-VII century, and from here they diffused widely in the Byzantine world, where she was known with the appellation of Panaghia Galaktotrophousa (the “All-Holy Milk Giver”). In Western Europe, the cult of the Virgin of the Milk was diffused with the practice of keeping ampoules which contained the holy milk of the Virgin, regarded as a substance with miraculous effects for the young mothers who had not enough milk to nourish their children (Cassigoli 2009).

[Image: http://www.ponteagreve.it/parrocchia/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/madonna-del-latte2.jpeg]




Female Symbols

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Fresco of the beginning of 1400s, attributed to the Master of Signa, in the Church of Saint Lawrence at Ponte a Greve, Florence. The image represents the so-called Madonna del Latte (“Our Lady of the Milk”), that is the Virgin Mary suckling the little child Jesus. The iconography is clearly inspired to the images of the goddess Isis suckling the child Horus, widely spread in Antiquity. In fact, the first pictures of the Virgin Mary in this guise are found just in Christianized Egypt, since the VI-VII century, and from here they diffused widely in the Byzantine world, where she was known with the appellation of Panaghia Galaktotrophousa (the “All-Holy Milk Giver”). In Western Europe, the cult of the Virgin of the Milk was diffused with the practice of keeping ampoules which contained the holy milk of the Virgin, regarded as a substance with miraculous effects for the young mothers who had not enough milk to nourish their children (Cassigoli 2009). [Image: http://www.ponteagreve.it/parrocchia/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/madonna-del-latte2.jpeg]