Saint Gertrude the Great

Saint Gertrude was a Cistercian Benedictine nun born on January 6th, 1256, in Eisleben, Germany. Her conventual life began at the age of five, when she entered the convent in Helfta, Saxony. There she learned about liberal arts and Latin. 

She is represented as a Benedictine abbess, with the black cowl and the abbess’s staff, an iconographic error, since she never held this position. 

The confusion is caused by the fact that another nun of the same name, Gertrude of Hackeborn, was abbess of the Helfta convent several years before the saint’s admission. 

One of the most representative iconographic attributes of Gertrude is the image of a Child Jesus that is located inside her heart.

This symbol alludes to the mystical experiences that the nun lived, among which stands the exchange of her heart with Christ’s. In addition, in her writings, the nun recorded the phrase “you will find me in Gertrude’s heart”, which Jesus transmitted to her. 

The saint died in 1302. Her devotion began in the 17th century after her canonization and was widely disseminated and received in the female convents of colonial America, as she was considered an exemplary figure and role model. 

Among her precepts, the importance she gave to the love of Christ as a fundamental factor to achieve salvation stands out. 

The horizontal format of this image is outstanding, because thanks to it the painter was able to emphasize both the figure of the saint and the landscape that surrounds her. 

The landscape, which occupies a large part of the composition, conveys a sensation of depth thanks to the fact that in his representation the painter used a perspective that recreates the atmosphere of the forest and the mountains in the distance.