Pilar Monastery Cloister: A Good Monk’s Reward

A Good Monk’s Reward
The image shows a framed painting set into the wall of the Pilar Monastery cloister. It accompanies an explanation board that briefly describes the story behind this painting. Here is the text from that board:

A GOOD MONK’S REWARD
The monk had practised a lot of charity in his life by feeding the poor and the sick. Here he is seen fasting and meditating on death with a skull in his hand — a typical symbol of medieval spirituality. In ecstasies, he feels the presence of Jesus feeding him, accompanied by two angels — a reward for his good deeds.

Central to this painting is the monk, shown in a half-reclining position with his right hand resting on a skull in his lap and a cross in his left hand. He is supported from behind by an angel. Beside him is Jesus, accompanied by a second angel carrying a bowl on a tray. Jesus holds a spoon and feeds the monk, whose mouth is open to receive the food.

The scene appears to take place outdoors in a rocky landscape with sparse greenery, including scattered trees, small plants, and bushes.

The painting creates an interesting reversal between the monk’s earthly life and his heavenly reward. According to the accompanying board, the monk had spent his life performing acts of charity by feeding the poor and the sick. In his moment of fasting and meditation, it is now Jesus who feeds him, accompanied by two angels. The act therefore visually completes the moral expressed in the title, A Good Monk’s Reward.

Like “One Good Deed Wins Heaven” nearby, this painting depicts an anonymous, ordinary monk rather than a named saint, and its precise source remains untraced. The two paintings differ sharply in style: the duke panel is fully polychrome, while this one is rendered in a tonal blue-green wash, closer in handling to the cloister’s Stigmata of St. Francis panel, with which it shares a similar rocky, sparsely wooded outdoor setting and may be by the same hand. The foliage in both has a evergreen character that reads as closer to Konkan coastal vegetation than to the bare or autumnal trees typical of European devotional landscape painting, suggesting a painter working from local surroundings rather than an imported model.

Paintings in the Pilar Monastery Cloister
1. Pilar Monastery Cloister: One Good Deed Wins Heaven
2. Pilar Monastery Cloister: A Good Monk’s Reward
3. Pilar Monastery Cloister: The Stigmata of St. Francis of Assisi
4. Pilar Monastery Cloister: The Death of St. Francis of Assisi
5. Pilar Monastery Cloister: Death of St. Joseph

Copyright © 2026 by YatrikaOne. All rights reserved.