Our Lady of Bethlehem (Puerto Rico)

Our Lady of Bethlehem (Spanish: la Virgen de Belén) is a Flemish-style oil painting that arrived in Puerto Rico.

A second legend identifies this site as the location where the Three Kings visited the Holy Family, and presented their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh to the Divine Child.

[2] A tradition going back to the 7th century, located at this site the burial place of the innocent victims killed by Herod the Great after the birth of Jesus.

Those converting to Christianity were given a mixture of milk and honey to drink, which in the early churches of Egypt, Rome, and North Africa was solemnly blessed at the Easter and Pentecost vigils.

The woman in the painting, the Virgin Mary, is medium-sized, and has some color on her face, lose hair, rays around the head, and eyes gazing upon the Child in swaddling clothes.

During the Siege of Abercromby (1797), bishop Juan Bautista Zengotita gave orders for daily public prayer, to be held in parishes of the city.

According to Cayetano Coll y Toste's legend, participants, mainly women, sang songs and litanies, and carried candles or torches in their hands.

A painting meant to be a votive offering gives witness to the fact that inhabitants began to consider Our Lady as the "Protectora de la ciudad", or "Guardian of the City."

He made many reproductions of the original Our Lady of Bethlehem, some of which are to be found in Old San Juan's National Gallery and the museum of the Universidad de Puerto Rico in Río Piedras.

In the prologue he gave witness to the courage of the men and women who took part in the Siege of 1797, and called her Fellow Citizen of all Puerto Ricans.

During the 13th century, in the town of Saydnaya, near Damascus, next to a wooden pictorial representation of the Virgin, there was an inscription in Latin: Hoc oleum ex ubere Genitris Dei Virginia Mariae emanavit in loco, qui Sardinia vocatur, ubi genitilitas est, ex imagine lignea, which means: "This oil flowed from the breast of the Virgin Mary, Mother of God, sculpted in wood.

Responding to the devotion and worship of the Virgin in Europe during the Middle Ages, early Flemish painters produced numerous images of Mary.

Rogier Van der Weyden, presumed creator or inspirer of Puerto Rican "Lady of Bethlehem", was a Flemish painter of fame and prestige in the 15th century.