The Virgin’s Milk

On the Fluidity of Images and the Production of Divine Presence

Image coming soon

Extent: 478 pages

Publisher: Wiley-VCH

Subjects: Art & Art History, Religious Studies

Series: Art History (Outside a Series)

Language: English

Hardback (Forthcoming)

(March 2027)

ISBN: 9782503610399

Price: $207.00

The current volume investigates the Nursing Virgin as a pictorial and religious phenomenon, paying attention to iconographic variations, miraculous appearances, and the global circulation of her images.


Among the most popular depictions of the Virgin Mary are paintings of her suckling the Christ Child. On occasion, she would offer her breast to the viewer, milk dripping, with her Son looking on. Some miracle-working icons – such as the famous Virgin of Saidnaya – “took on her flesh” and issued forth salvific oil. Whether as a pictorial motif or miraculous activity, the lactating Virgin Mary carried deep-seated spiritual meaning, which sometimes extended todepictions of breastfeeding Even or Christ’s wet-nurses. Although hosted by visual media, her image was experienced as an unmediated (immediate presence). Her strong emotional, even erotic, address embodied by her virginal and lactating breast appealed to a diverse audience world-wide: early Christians of the Middle East, Catholics, Greek-Orthodox, Muslims, Ethiopians, Colonial Peruvian, South Asians, and Japanese Converts. Contemporary decolonial and feminist artists employ, refract, and reassemble her image as well. The current volume investigates the Nursing Virgin as a pictorial and religious phenomenon, paying attention to iconographic variations, the global circulation of her image, and the ongoing appeal of her inclusive address.