FWIW… John Steinbeck uses the motif - not sure how consciously - in The Grapes of Wrath, when Rose of Sharon, whose baby has died, breast feeds a starving old man.
I’ve seen a painting of that theme in the gallery at York. The man she suckles is her father who is in jail, but i cannot remember the painting or the artist names.
[hijack] Can I just mention that while it’s a beautiful sentiment, both of those paintings display extremely poor latch-on and would hurt the mother immensely? Obviously painted by men with little or no experience watching women and babies breast feed. [/hijack]
Like the Rubens painting that Fretful Porpentine mentioned, the painting that you saw was almost certainly a depiction of Caritas Romana, a fairly common subject in European painting. It comes from a story by Valerius Maximus about Cimon and his daughter Pero, who nourished him in prison with her own breastmilk.
These are just a few examples (I know I’ve seen several others):
I love that this is an entire subgenre of classical art. My favorites are the ones that, apparently trying to appear less salacious, have the charitable woman lactating into a man’s mouth from a distance of several feet.
Miller, that reminds me of depictions of “The Lactation of St. Bernard,” in which the saint receives a shot of breastmilk from the Virgin Mary (actually, a statue of her that’s come to life) across the room (as seen in this painting by Alonso Cano).
I saw something awfully similar to that last one at the San Diego Museum of Art last year, but it was a saint who was sort of lying down and the action was described as nursing.
Thanks, Skopo. That’s just the painting I was thinking of. I couldn’t remember the name, and I couldn’t think of a way to Google it without getting fifty bazillion porn links.
It’s not bad, but there’s another, even better version by a different Spanish artist whose name, I’m ashamed to say, has escaped me. A Baroque painter, but not Velazquez or Murillo or Ribalta… though very much in the style of Ribalta. I saw it at the Prado (Spanish artists seem to have a thing for lactating breasts) last Christmas and was astonished by its intense realism.
You’d be surprised at what you’ll find when you google for “lactation” and “St. Bernard.”