A blessed Christmas

I haven't been posting much this year, but I can't let Christmas go by without a Christmas card. Especially since I've discovered the painter Gerard David (1460?-1523), who created a number of wonderful pictures that just happen to have paternosters or rosaries in them.

Here is yet another picture of the Virgin Mary, the Infant Jesus and a string of paternoster or rosary beads.



In this case, we can't tell as much about the beads as I would like because the only photo of this I could find online is a small one from the Museo Castagnino in Mar del Plata, Argentina, where the painting resides. The Museo Castagnino is a city museum named for local painter Juan Carlos Castagnino, housed in a delightfully turreted Art Nouveau mansion in what looks like the middle of downtown.



Here, as often elsewhere, the Virgin is dressed in a blue gown and red mantle. Most of what we see is the red mantle, which might explain why the beads shown are not painted in red, the color most often seen in such portraits of the Virgin with beads.

I can't tell from the painting whether we are looking at a long loop of beads with a tassel at the bottom, or whether this is a straight string with two tassels that just happen to be lying right next to each other. Either is interesting, but I would be happy if it was the latter, since it would support my theory that a long straight string is a possible, though not common, type of paternoster for women (assuming that the beads here are supposed to belong to the Virgin, not the Infant).

I can count approximately 32 beads in what we can see here, and the space hidden behind the Infant's hand and leg (and darling little toes) has room for about another 20 or so. I would guess this is intended to represent a string of 50 Aves and five Pater beads, one of which is visible just above the tassel(s) at the bottom.

The Ave beads seem to be a sort of gold color, but what I can see of the highlights and interior details (which is not much) suggest that they may be transparent, perhaps representing amber. I've seen another painting of the Virgin and Child with amber-like beads in the Isenheim altarpiece.

The Pater beads occur after every 10th Ave, as expected. They are more or less light-gray smudges in this image if you look at it up close, but I would guess that they might be intended as silver.

The Virgin and Child with beads seems to be a classic theme, and I always find it delightful, however anachronistic it is. It's an image -- like the images of the Virgin "in humility" that show her sitting on the ground -- that encouraged people, in the time when it was painted, to think of Mary and the Infant as human, warm and accessible, rather than majestic and distant. And Christmas is a celebration of exactly that: of a Christ as human as we are.

May peace be on all of us, and on this flawed but still beautiful world. Merry Christmas.

Previous Christmas posts:
Christmas 2005
Christmas 2006
Christmas 2007
Christmas 2008
Christmas 2009

Christmas blessings

Time for my annual "Christmas card," with a wish that everyone may receive the gift of joyful wonder at this season.

I am always enchanted to discover yet another image of the Virgin Mary and Infant Jesus with beads. So many of these pictures were clearly painted by people who love and are well acquainted with REAL babies and how they love to play with things.

Infants approach the whole world with a sense of openness and discovery, as you'll know if you've ever tried to keep one from putting everything she encounters into her mouth. I have yet to see the Holy Infant shown actually chewing on beads or attempting to hang them on his mother's ear, but I'm sure that's going to happen any minute now in some of the paintings I've seen. Fortunately, the beads in the picture are usually (as here) red coral, a good and safe (if expensive!) choice for teething on.

This particular painting is one that's hard to find good pictures of, since the beads are quite small and don't have a lot of contrast with the background (especially not with the Virgin's dark dress and red cloak). I found a full-page version of it in Krone und Schleier: Kunst als Mittelalterlichen Frauenklöster ("Crown and Veil: The Art of Female Monasticism in the Middle Ages"), the catalog from a 2005 exhibition in the Ruhr Museum in Essen, Germany.

When the Virgin is wearing a long string of beads around her neck, they are usually supposed to represent a rosary. But if these are indeed rosary or paternoster beads, they are a little unusual. It's very common in such paintings for the beads to be red. But it's uncommon to see beads this small and numerous -- there are a little over 100 visible, which means that the closest of the "standard" forms would be a string of 150. If this is a paternoster, it's also unusual to see it shown as a string of beads all the same size: most of these paintings show a string with smaller red beads and larger "gauds" or markers of some other material. Gauds are a much clearer visual signal that what's being represented is specifically a rosary.

Certainly strings of uniformly sized beads with no markers are a recognized form of paternoster, and one that seems to have been common at least as early as beads with gauds. It's still not at all clear whether the form with gauds or the form without gauds is earlier, or whether they are both the same age: some of the earliest surviving paternosters from Western Europe have two distinctly different types or sizes of beads. Prayer beads from Eastern Christian traditions are generally all the same size, as are most of the Hindu or Buddhist prayer beads from farther east, which may or may not have been an influence on Christian ideas about prayer beads (the jury is very much still out on that one).

There's nothing about the origin of the painting itself that suggests whether this is a rosary or not. It's one panel of a large altarpiece with scenes from the life of Mary, originally painted around 1410-1420 for the monastery of Cistercian nuns in Fröndenberg. But I've been looking at paintings of necklaces that are clearly not rosaries from this general period, and I haven't seen anything quite like this. Hmmm... another topic to add to the never-ending list for further research!

Previous Christmas posts:
Christmas 2005
Christmas 2006
Christmas 2007

Computer "wallpaper" with rosaries

And a post about Christmas-themed rosaries (which I still think is kind of a strange idea)

A Blessed Christmas

Here is my "Christmas card" for you, with a wish that everyone may receive the gift of joyful wonder at this season.

In my various travels -- real and virtual -- I am always enchanted to discover yet another image of the Virgin Mary and Infant Jesus with beads. So many of these pictures were clearly painted by people who love and are well acquainted with REAL babies and how much they love to play with something so appealing to the sense of touch.

Infants approach the whole world with a sense of openness and discovery, as you'll know if you've ever tried to keep one from putting everything she encounters into her mouth. I have yet to see the Holy Infant shown actually chewing on beads, but I'm sure that's going to happen any minute now in some of the paintings I've seen. Fortunately, the beads are usually red coral, a good and harmless (if expensive!) choice for teething on.

This particular painting is a bit of a mystery. I've seen two versions, and while I'm no art historian, it seems fairly clear from the museum labels that no one is sure just who painted either one. I found the color version above on REALonline (which, annoyingly enough, I can't get to work at the moment, so I can't easily check what it says about the painter). My notes say it is tentatively identified as a copy after Joos van Cleve, but all I can see that this has in common with van Cleve's work is that he painted the same subject, the Virgin Mary and Infant Jesus. The style of the painting is quite different.

Then I found what seems to be a slightly different version of the same painting -- this one has a bit of landscape in the background, seen through a window, but the pose is identical:



This image comes from the KIK-IRPA (Royal Institute for the Study and Conservation of Belgium's Artistic Heritage) website, and the painting is in Liège at the Musée Curtius (which seems to be in flux and doesn't have a very organized website at the moment). The information on the KIKIRPA site attributes this one to the school of Joachim Patinir (1480-1524), which doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me either, considering all the paintings I can find online by him are broad landscapes with a few small human figures. So I don't think this is really his style either.

It sounds to me like the curators who wrote the labels were guessing. I'll be keeping my eyes open, and would welcome any further pointers. (So far I and my faithful readers are 2 for 2 on identifying mysterious paintings!)

I should mention, by the way, that for the purpose of creating a pretty "greeting card," I've done quite a bit of retouching and mending on the color image above. The original looked quite scratched and rather beat-up, and I've tried to smooth over the flaws while (hopefully) not destroying essential details like the folds and edges of the Virgin's very filmy and transparent veil. (I'm interested to see the Virgin's ears showing so clearly through her veil. It seems a bit unusual to see her ears at all -- usually they're completely covered. Aren't women's ears supposed to be rather erotic at this period?)

One intriguing feature that I think I can see a bit more clearly in the Belgian black and white image is the drinking glass on the side table. It's something of an artistic challenge to paint a transparent object, and the details don't come through very clearly in the color image, which is rather small. The black and white version shows a bit more detail including -- I think -- indications that we have here a covered cup, not a simple goblet. The detail below shows where I've lightened the image to show the lid -- I'm obviously meddling with the image here, but I'm following original details that I think I can see in closeup view.



There's a rather better detail of such a covered glass here.

Additional links

Previous Christmas cards:
Christmas 2006
Christmas 2005

An article about another painting by van Cleve which was altered later to include a passion flower

Christmas Blessings

As I did last year, I'm sharing a portrait of the Virgin Mary and the Infant Jesus with a rosary. Actually, this time the rosary isn't in the hands of either of them, but rather, in the hands of all the women and girls in the group of donors kneeling at the foot of Mary's throne. (You can see it best if you look at the mother of the family in front.)



This is (somewhat awkwardly) titled "Die Madonna auf der Mondsichel im Hortus conclusus verehrt von einer Stifterfamilie" (Madonna on a Crescent in an Enclosed Garden with Donor Family). It was painted on an oakwood panel sometime in the 1450s, by an anonymous painter known as the "Master of 1456." The delightful blue, starry background was added later. I found it by looking for rosaries in all the color portraits of the Virgin Mary I could find at the Marburg Foto Archive (which is unfortunately not very well indexed).

I've had this picture on my computer "desktop" at work this month, and I like its serene quality. This has been an unusually busy Christmas season, though I expect to be back to something like normal after the Twelve Days of Christmas are done.

To wander a bit off topic -- I wish more people celebrated the Twelve Days, although I realize they are quite out of step in some ways with today's society. (Full disclosure: I'm probably somewhat biased, since my birthday happens to fall on one of the twelve. :)

In an agricultural society, I think the time before Christmas was generally quite busy with preparations for winter: gathering in the last of the harvest, cutting firewood, cooking and preserving and so forth. Correspondingly, the church's season of Advent before Christmas began as -- and to some extent, still is -- a season of preparation and fasting similar to Lent (though less intense).

Christmas Day, then, would therefore have been the beginning of all the winter's feasting, relaxing and generally celebrating. The Twelve Days of Christmas functioned more or less as a post-harvest vacation, once the preparations for winter were done.

In modern times, it seems that our (much less comprehensive) preparations begin right after Hallowe'en (in the USA at least), and the day after Thanksgiving, the celebrations begin. Before, rather than after, Christmas is now the season of parties, visits, church pageants and so forth. Radio stations play "all Christmas music" for a month beforehand.

And then suddenly on the 26th of December, it all disappears.

Well, it doesn't all disappear from my house.

Fortunately I have friends who celebrate Twelfth Night, and it's a tradition I treasure.

It's beginning to look a lot like.....

First, a news note: There's an interesting discussion going on at the moment about Big Red Rosaries on the Paternosters mailing list (at Yahoo! Groups), based on some new data extracted by a helpful scholar from 16th century inventory records.

* * *

I was recently reminded -- since this is just a few days before Christmas -- that I've meant to go looking and see what was online in the way of Christmas-themed rosaries.

Along with "Italian" and "Mexican" rosaries, and rosaries made in the colors of sports teams (believe me, I don't make these things up!), holidays are a theme that modern rosary makers seem to like. In this, they demonstrate that, just as in earlier centuries, rosaries tend to follow whatever themes are popularly expressed in other personal jewelry of the times.

Some merely re-label any red or green rosary for the occasion as a "Christmas rosary," or make rosaries with red Ave beads and green maker beads, or vice versa.



I've been idly wondering just how the specific combination of red plus green came to signify "Christmas." As with other such color traditions, my first suspicion is that the association was made in the 19th century -- when a good many supposedly "ancient" traditions were invented (like pink for girls and blue for boys, or white wedding dresses).

There are also some interesting rosaries with special features. In a quick pass through eBay, I saw rosaries that come inside a porcelain box shaped like a Christmas ornament (though I suspect it's too heavy to hang on most trees), and several different rosaries with Nativity scenes, or images with the Virgin and Child, on the marker beads or central medallions.



Someone is now apparently making crucifixes and medallions especially designed for Christmas, as well. The ones I've seen are, ummmm, not quite to my taste, but here's an example, in gold colored metal with bits of red and green enamel here and there:



Along different lines, I rather like a rosary that was recently on eBay, from a seller whose screen name is bashton1. This seller's rosaries are very creative and beautifully made (and priced accordingly!), and this one is an example:



It's unusual to see anything replace the crucifix on a rosary, but to me this silver Nativity medal seems very appropriate.

I must admit that I'm left wondering, a bit irreverently, whether one is supposed to use a "Christmas rosary" only during the Christmas season, or whether it's equally appropriate to pray with a Christmas rosary at Easter, or in the middle of July. We humans sometimes attach a lot of significance to our own notions of what's appropriate.

But I rather think God is glad to receive our prayers whatever the time, place, or occasion.

A Blessed Christmas to all!

I just have to show you this absolutely darling picture of the infant Jesus playing (anachronistically, of course) with beads. This is a detail from the Rottal votive panel -- a devotional painting commissioned by Jo:rg Rottal zu Talberg (Austria) in about 1505. I'd love to have a color picture of the entire thing for Christmas "wallpaper" on my computer: most of the saints are dressed in red and green, and the background is gold, tooled in fantastic curly leaf shapes.



A picture (black and white, unfortunately) of the entire painting is available here, and more details in color are here, here , here , here , and here .

Wallpaper -- with rosaries

'Tis the season, and if you have a computer whose screen you stare at a lot, it seems perfectly reasonable to me to decorate all that blank expanse of screen with something seasonal and worth looking at.

So herewith, a brief guide to some nice "wallpaper" images that just happen to show medieval rosaries and paternosters in them.

Both my home and work computers have BIG screens, so I look for images that are around 900 to 1500 pixels wide. Some smaller images can be enlarged and still look good, but most will start to look blurry and odd if you enlarge them too much.

This is the one I currently have on my desktop at work:



It's a Southern German panel painting by Herlin Friedrich from 1488, originally part of an altarpiece. This image from REALonline is only 624 pixels wide, so enlarged on my 21-inch screen it doesn't exactly look stellar, but for a smaller screen it can look okay. And it's cheerful, it's red and green, and it shows a whole family of kneeling people (parents, five daughters and four sons) all of whom are carrying rosaries. Most of the rosaries seem to be coral, except perhaps the father's. Mom seems to be nudging her oldest daughter to please take hers off her belt and use it!

This one is rather dark. It was painted by the "Master of the Saint Lucy Legend" around 1488 and is now in the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels. (When you see a painting by the "Master of.." something or other, it means we know the artist from other works but don't know his name.)



This image is over 1000 pixels wide, so it's nice and sharp. I run pictures like this through Photoshop to adjust brightness and color balance. This and the next two pictures all come from the Web Gallery of Art, a splendid picture source.

If you like "saint spotting," this picture has the "mystical marriage" of Saint Catherine -- the Infant Jesus is giving her a ring, and you can tell it's Catherine he's giving it to because she is wearing velvet patterned with wheels, her badge of identity. Saint Agnes in the right foreground is holding a lamb on her lap, and she has a nice long coral rosary hanging from her belt. There are two saints with tongs, and both of them are holding rosaries too -- the one on the left has a straight rosary with two tassels, only the second time I've seen this type on a woman. One of these two is probably Saint Apollonia, who was martyred by having all her teeth pulled out (hence the tongs) but I can't tell which one.

This one has the Infant Jesus entertaining himself with his devotee's rosary:



It's another panel painting, this time by an unknown artist, probably Flemish. It dates to about 1475 and is in the Musée d'Art Religieux et d'Art Mosan, Liège.

And lastly, can you spot the rosary in this one?



This is the central panel of the St. Columba Altarpiece, painted around 1455 by Rogier van der Weyden. (Alte Pinakothek, Munich)

Yes, that's right -- it's being held by the kneeling spectator at the very left edge of the picture with his hands resting on top of the stone wall.

As in these panels, the commonest place to find rosaries in Nativity scenes and other religious paintings is in the hands of the donors included in the painting. But whenever saints are pictured as ordinary people in contemporary dress, they too may be carrying rosaries, however anachronistic.