Rosary or not: gauds and groups

part 4 of a series

As I mentioned earlier, the first essential of doing research on rosaries and paternosters is to be able to identify paternoster beads when we see them. Besides the "people clues" — who is wearing or holding the beads and how — some clues come from the beads themselves.

I've been looking at some portraits of women with beads around the neck that I'm pretty sure are decorative necklaces and not rosaries. But then I ran across the painting below. It's called "The Magdalen Weeping," and was painted about 1525 in the Workshop of the "Master of the Magdalen Legend." It's now in the National Gallery, London.



(I must digress here to praise the National Gallery for their new website, with its quite remarkable zoom viewer. A few years ago all they had on the site was one small image of each painting. The zoom viewer is a major improvement, and a boon to anyone who needs to see small details without having to cross a large ocean.)

Here's a closeup. As always, click on the picture for a larger view:



A very good clue that something is a rosary is the presence of gauds (marker beads) at regular intervals on a single string of beads, with smaller beads between. The painter may or may not reproduce exactly how many beads are in each interval, but my sense is that the presence of larger, contrasting colored beads like this is probably intended as a signal that this element of the painting represents a rosary. So far, I have not seen anything that couldn't be a rosary that has this feature.

An additional clue in Saint Mary Magdalen's necklace is that it has a cross hanging from it. This by itself isn't definitive: medieval necklaces can also have crosses. And if you've been reading this blog for awhile, you will have seen that medieval and Renaissance rosaries didn't always have crosses, by any means: they could end with a medal, a tassel, or just be a continuous loop with no defined end point. But coupled with the gauds, this makes me even more inclined to think that this is a rosary.

In many paintings we can see enough of the beads to tell that they are definitely in groups of ten. While there were probably other devotional practices that used beads in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, the "decade" style of rosary devotion was overwhelmingly the most popular and easily recognized. This is an additional factor reinforcing the message that this is intended to signify a rosary, and perhaps a clue that the artist was attempting to paint literally what he saw.

Interestingly, the bead numbers are less than clear in the Magdalen painting. If you look closely at the detail, the beads toward the back of her neck become rather vague. There might be another clear gaud (these are probably intended to be rock crystal) on the lower of the two strands after the tenth bead (counting backward from the gaud close to the cross) but the painting is rather muddled in this area.

I've also seen a number of paintings where the beads are in groups of approximately ten — nine or eleven are fairly common, and sometimes eight or twelve. If several groups are visible, they will very often have different numbers. This leads me to think that the artist is being less than perfectly literal, but that a rosary is probably still the intended meaning.

It becomes more problematic when the beads are in regular groups of less than ten. My working hypothesis is that if there are gauds at regular intervals, a rosary is probably the intended meaning. But there are cases where I'm not sure what to think. For instance, there is this: a detail from a portrait of about 1585 of the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia by the workshop of Alonso de Sánchez Coello. The Infanta is pictured with her dwarf, Magdalena Ruiz, who is wearing beads around her neck. (This portrait is in the Museo del Prado, Madrid — which has another very nice zoom viewer on their website.)



The beads are in regular groupings, but the groups are only three beads. There is a cross hanging from the beads. Rosary or not? I've debated about this one. I'm inclined to think it is: the regular groups with gauds and the cross strongly suggest it — especially since the cross is not hanging neatly in the bottom center as I think it would if this was a decorative necklace with a cross pendant. This has more the air of a familiar string of beads flung casually around Magdalena's neck because she has her hands full (with a couple of playful monkeys). The cross also looks like a type common to rosaries: compare the sketches in the Book of Guaman Poma.

My working hypothesis is that groups of "known" numbers are a clue that something is a rosary, but other groupings — depending on what other clues are present — are not necessarily a signal that this is not a rosary. No doubt this is my bias showing. I study rosaries, so I may be inclined to see them everywhere. But I would rather think that my experience with the styles and appearance of medieval and Renaissance rosaries may be leading me to point out rosaries in paintings where their significance has previously been missed.

Previous posts in this series:

Part 1: Rosary or not?
Part 2: From a Spanish galleon
Par 3: Rosary or not: the people factor

Rosary or not: the people factor

part 3 of a series

The first essential of doing research on rosaries and paternosters is to be able to identify paternoster beads when we see them. This is especially important when we are looking at medieval paintings, prints, or statues; does a string of beads represent a rosary, or is it simply decorative?

(I have contemplated this question before: see parts 1 and 2 below. I'm gathering these into a series now because I have several more aspects I'd like to write about.)

There are several sets of possible clues. One is how people are interacting with the beads -- how and where they are being worn or held.

For instance, common sense suggests that a loop of beads held in the hands or hanging from an elbow is likely to represent prayer beads, and much less likely to be a belt or a necklace. Here's Prince Friedrich the Wise holding his beads.



(I wrote about these beads here.)

A person holding beads and kneeling, or putting their hands together in a "prayer" pose, is especially likely to be using them to pray with.



(Another example here)

Beads attached to a belt are also very likely to represent a paternoster or rosary. Beads hanging from a brooch, pinned to a garment, or wrapped around a wrist are also likely to represent a rosary.

Then there are a few odd cases. Probably my favorite is the gentleman on the far right in The Judgement of Daniel (detail below), a panel painting by the Master of Mariapfarr from Salzburg in about 1500.



I've always wondered whether his beads would go flying if he tried to draw his sword in a hurry. Now that I'm taking a closer look, though, the beads are below the sword's crossguard and are only looped around the scabbard; he'd probably be all right. There's another gentleman with his beads attached almost the same way here.

Rosaries worn around the neck are especially problematical. Today it's usually considered "sacrilegious" (at least in English-speaking cultures) to wear a rosary around your neck. I can't tell you how many people have told me that their Catholic grandmothers were horrified at the idea! But apparently in the Middle Ages and Renaissance it was more common, though I'm told it was still frowned upon by some. (I've written about this here.)

The problem is how to tell the difference between a rosary worn around the neck and a decorative necklace. This takes some serious digging through paintings and portraits of whatever period you're interested in. Necklaces and other secular jewelry made from strings of beads haven't always been the fashion in all centuries or all cultures. There are eras where people simply didn't wear them.

I hope to write more about this later. But to try to answer the question for 15th and 16th century fashion at least, I've started to collect portraits from that period of people wearing something that's clearly a necklace. I want to see what the similarities and differences are. Many of the necklaces made of beads seem to be very short, just at the base of the neck (like what used to be called a "choker").



I also have to mention the woodcut of a friar with "flying" beads here.

The Virgin Mary and the Infant Jesus are something of a special case. It is quite common to see the Infant Jesus playing with a string of beads, which the Virgin is often (but not always) wearing around her neck. In most of the cases I've seen, I do think these are rosary beads.

However, a short string of plain red beads worn around the Infant Jesus' neck -- especially if there is a little branch-like thing hanging from it -- is more likely to represent the sort of coral necklace that was often given to babies because it was thought to avert the "evil eye." Compare the one shown toward the end of this article (which I'm sure is a necklace) to this one (which I think is a rosary). And just this week I found an image that has both! This is the Virgin and Child with St. Wolfgang of Ratisbon, a votive picture commissioned about 1490 by Mathias Hierssegker in Austria.



Lastly, while I can't point to any examples at the moment, I'd like to investigate the pictures I've seen of women wearing a girdle (i.e. a belt) around their waists which is composed of beads. I am operating mostly on logic rather than data here, but I very much doubt these are rosaries. First, I've never seen one that had any of the "key" characteristics that signal unmistakably "this is a rosary" (more about this another time). Second, to use such a rosary to pray with, you'd have to unhook it from around your waist: I would think that taking off your belt would qualify as "undressing", which a lady would never do in public.

But of course I could be wrong about that ;) I've been wrong before.

If you want to test your powers of detection, take a look at these links.
· German couple holding beads.
· I think this lady has one set of beads tucked into the front of her belt and is holding another in her hands (closeup here).
· Saint Joseph (far left, in yellow) has beads tucked into his belt here.
· Charles the Good, Count of Flanders, in a 1400s portrait.

I think these are all rosaries or paternosters. Do you agree?

Previous posts in this series:

Part 1: Rosary or not?
Part 2: From a Spanish galleon

From a Spanish galleon

A rosary that wasn't?
(but actually I think it is)

Here's another one of those "Duh!" stories like Balthasar's acorns, where a little more information makes clear that my first guess was wrong.

Up for sale on eBay about four years ago was what was billed as a rosary from 1715, specifically (the seller said) from one of the wrecks of the 1715 spanish treasure fleet, wrecked on the inshore reefs between Sebastian and Ft.Pierce, Florida, on July 31, 1715. It's said to be "solid gold" and was said to have been assessed at $47,000. (It sold for considerably less -- in the hundreds rather than the thousands.)



I took one look at this and snorted. There are no beads on it, just a chain. I was convinced it had to be a necklace.



I wrote to the seller to ask if they had any better photos. (Sellers are often quite willing to provide these to a polite inquirer if they have them -- very useful for anyone who collects pictures of something, even if you never bid on the specific piece they're offering.) I also pointed out the lack of beads and asked if they were sure this was really a rosary. I have to say, the reply I got was a bit rude, and it convinced me that a lot of sellers, especially dealers, really do not want to hear about it if you have information about their items :)



However, looking at this again with what I know today, I actually think it's a rosary after all. Here's what I think has happened. The original beads have all disappeared. The long links of wire we are seeing with a loop on each end originally each had a bead on them. Here's a diagram.



If you count the empty wire-links, there are indeed ten of them in a group, with a rather complicated-looking little group of stuff between each group. There are seven decades in all, a mildly unusual but not at all unheard-of number (the Franciscan Crown, for instance, has seven decades). The in-between bits of stuff each represent a gaud or marker bead. Each is composed of a short length of chain, a wire link similar to the others but with two loose bead caps remaining on it, and another short length of chain. Again the bead is now missing.

What's become of the beads is anyone's guess. If they were a relatively soft substance such as ivory, wood, amber or even pearls, they could have been destroyed by simple weathering or chewed by some of the local sea life. If they were a hard substance such as glass or agate, they could have been broken. I suspect this piece was also "cleaned up" considerably before being sold, since salvaged items often are, in order to appeal to modern collectors: perhaps there were some remnants of beads that were removed at that time, which is unfortunate for us since we've lost the opportunity to know what they were. The wire parts have probably also been re-linked and cleaned -- whether buried in sand or exposed, it's unlikely to have survived as completely unbroken and shiny as it is now.

rosary or not: part 2

Rosary or not?

One of the perpetually interesting features of eBay auctions is the seller who doesn't really know what they have. The classic instance is when someone is selling off things from a deceased relative's estate. Sometimes a genuinely rare and valuable piece will be a real bargain because the seller has no idea how valuable it actually is. At other times, the seller will mistakenly think they have something rare when it's actually quite common and worth far less than they think.

In rosaries, an area I'm coming to know fairly well, such mistakes are sometimes quite amusing. I've mentioned the "1830 rosary" trap here before. Rather more challenging is looking at some of the pieces people put up for sale and trying to figure out if they are actually rosaries at all. Sometimes people will put together something out of various leftover bits (see Orts) and may or may not succeed in getting them in the right order to make a rosary.



Here's an example that turned up on the German eBay recently. As far as I can tell, this is silver filigree round beads from a Biedermeyer rosary, a cross from somewhere else, and some lengths of chain. There are no "Hail, Mary" beads at all, though admittedly the result is a rather pretty necklace if it's long enough.

There's also a certain amount of confusion that I think we can blame on Madonna -- the singer -- since she brought the idea of wearing a rosary as a necklace back into fashion (more on this another time). Now we have sellers offering "rosary necklaces" that are plain old ordinary rosaries, and we also have sellers putting together necklaces that are clearly not really rosaries but have the "look" and referring to them as rosaries. Count the beads before you buy .