Georges Lallemant (Nancy ca. 1575-1636 Paris)

This drawing is preparatory for a painting in the church of Saint Géraud in Auzat, recognized as by Lallemant by Guillaume Kientz (‘Œuvres inédites d’Isaac Moillon, François Perrier, Georges Lallemant, J. Perron, Jean Boucher, R. Poisson, Jacques Blanchard, Jacques de Létin et Pieter van Mol. Peintures du XVIIe siècle en Auvergne’, Les cahiers d’histoire de l’art, IX, 2011, p. 18, fig. 8). The connection makes clear that the Virgin is not seen nursing her child, but Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, in a depiction of his ‘Lactation’. The playful tenderness and soft handling of the medium allow a comparison with a drawing at the Louvre, made into a woodcut by Ludolph Büsinck in 1623 (inv. 21768; see D. Lavalle in L’art en Lorraine au temps de Jacques Callot, exhib. cat., Nancy, Musée des Beaux-Arts, 1992, no. 54, ill.).