Vision of Saint Bernard

Late in the 12th century Herbert, a monk of Clairvaux, gathered miracle stories of the Cistercian order. One tells how a brother found Bernard alone in church, praying before a crucifix, and saw the figure of Christ free his arms from the cross and draw the saint into an embrace. Painters took up the scene from the early 14th century, and this panel of around 1510, which the Belvedere credits to the workshop of the Master of Pulkau, moves it into the woods. Christ leans down from a rough wooden cross among tall trees and holds the kneeling abbot close. Two angels in flight hold up a long white cloth. On the ground lies a mitre above a shield chequered in red and white, the heraldry later ascribed to Bernard and carried by the Cistercians.