# The Iconography of Fasting

This iconographic motif depicting the child Saint Nicholas with his nurse or mother was favored in monastic life contexts to remind the religious of the necessity of fasting and abstinence.
A very similar column statue, created around 1140 for the Abbey of Saint-Maur-des-Fossés (Val-de-Marne), is known.

Column Statue: The Fasting of Saint Nicholas
Circa 1140, Musée Intercommunal de Saint-Maur-des-Fossés
Photo © Marc Gil

Another image of this scene seems to have been made for the Collegiate Church of Notre-Dame-en-Vaux, as evidenced by another sculpted fragment featuring a veiled female head with the inscription (…)LAUS, probably referring to NICOLAUS.

Head of a woman, inv. 2007.1.549
Photo © Musées de Châlons-en-Champagne, A. Foviaux