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Secondary sourcePainting1907-1913

St. Hildegard, Prophetess

Fr. Paulus Krebs · 1907-1913

An early 20th-century painting imagining Hildegard holding a quill, with a line from her play Ordo Virtutum.

A later devotional painting imagining Hildegard as a prophetess and author, long after her death.

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Mosaic-style painting in an arched frame of a seated woman in a dark nun's habit and white wimple, wearing a gold cross necklace and gold halo with a crown-like band. She holds a quill in one hand and a scroll ribbon in the other on a blue background. Latin inscription along the bottom reads S. HILDEGARDIS PROPHETISSA and a longer Latin line.
Fr. Paulus Krebs, St. Hildegard, Prophetess, 1907-1913.

About this source

What it is

This painting by Fr. Paulus Krebs, made between 1907 and 1913, shows an imagined portrait of Hildegard of Bingen. She is seated in a nun's habit and halo, holding a quill in one hand and a scroll inscribed with a line from her play Ordo Virtutum (Play of the Virtues) in the other.

Why it matters

This is not a contemporary image of Hildegard but a later devotional painting made centuries after her death. It shows how she continued to be honored as a saint and author long after her lifetime, and how artists imagined her appearance and connected her to her own written works.

Look closer

  • Since no one knew exactly what Hildegard looked like, why do you think the artist chose to show her this way?
  • What does including a quill and a line from her play suggest about what the artist wanted viewers to remember about her?
  • How is this image different from a page actually written by Hildegard herself?

This painting is part of the curated material that grounds the AI version of Hildegard of Bingen on Humy.ai — when students ask about related events, the AI can quote it and cite it.

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