In living color

I'm home from the trip to Germany and the Netherlands, and it was quite productive... barring the usual mishaps with misplaced luggage, changing time zones, and so forth. But I have lots of pictures to show off, and months worth of interesting paternoster-related bits to write about.

Here's my proof that I was actually there: those are my toes you see in this photo of the cast-metal hole covers in the streets of Köln (which is what you call Cologne, Germany when you're speaking German).



My first appointment was at the Wallraf-Richarz Museum, which has a splendid collection of medieval and Renaissance paintings. I was able to go "back stage" and take close-up photos of a number of paintings that I'd only seen in black and white -- for example, this one:



And now I have this:



I also found time to stop by the Church of St. Andreas, which turns out to be just a couple of blocks from the Kölner Dom (the Cathedral). Actually it was quite easy to walk everywhere in Köln, since essentially everything I wanted was in the center of town, which is quite compact. I spent a few quiet minutes in the crypt of St. Andreas, where Saint Albertus Magnus is buried in a Roman stone sarcophagus, but my main reason for being there was to look at the Rosary Society altarpiece, which has yet another of those scenes of the Virgin Mary and Infant Jesus with a (rather anachronistic) string of rosary beads. Unfortunately I couldn't get good pictures, since while the painting is quite large, it's mounted rather high up on a wall and I couldn't get a good angle. I may try again if I have more time on another visit.

Then I was off to Munich for a few days, where I went off in the wrong direction more than once on the excellent, but slightly confusing tram system (though I always got where I was going, in the end). I was able to look at a couple of interesting rosaries backstage at the Bayerischen Nationalmuseum, but I probably spent more time ogling the very large and fascinating collection of royal knicknacks at the Residenz Museum's Schatzkammer.

The Residenz is the former palace of the rulers of Bavaria, and the Schatzkammer is their collection of "treasures," which include lots of gold, jewels, ingenious things carved of amber and rhinoceros horn, silver and so forth. I spent quite a bit of time trying to get the best photos I could of the twenty or so rosaries on display. Many of them date from later than the periods I'm most interested in, so for the most part they are fairly standard rosaries, and they are interesting mostly for the materials they are made of and the medals and accessories that go along with them. Here are a random few beads from one of the displays:



One of the pieces I especially wanted to see was the green emerald rosary I had modeled this one after. It was in the same display case as the beads above, but of course (since I wanted to see it) it was way in the back of the case, making good photography difficult. I was also a bit disappointed to see that it wasn't specially noted or described in any detail, since I think that, if only for sheer ostentation value, a rosary made entirely out of emeralds outshines a lot of the other things in the collection. More than that -- not only was it in the back of the case, it was actually dusty. Tsk, tsk, tsk.



Back to Köln for Easter weekend, I had a chance to go to the three remaining museums on my list: the Domschatz (Cathedral treasury), the Schnütgen Museum (of which more later) and the former Diocesan Museum, which moved last year into new quarters at the ruined Church of St. Kolumba a few blocks from downtown.

At Kolumba, they are still in the process of moving things from and to storage, so I couldn't make an appointment to see any of their large collection of beads. There were no beads on display either, since this particular museum is now designed as a place for contemplation rather than for historical study, with a lot of open space and about two-thirds modern religous art to one-third historical art. The historical pieces they do have on display are quite spectacular, though, and I was particularly happy to see, in the very last room, another painting that I had only seen in black and white. It's this one, called "Muttergottes in dem Erker" ("the Mother of God in a corner").



I am not a betting person, but I had made a bet with myself that the beads in this painting would turn out to be red: and sure enough, they are.





In color, this painting strikes me as an extraordinarily tender and lovely scene.

Pictures from Köln:

In living color
More living color
A Joos van Cleve altarpiece
Details, details

Ostentation in silver

I've gone on at some length about the portraits of wealthy German burghers' wives with big red coral rosaries -- presumably a sign of wealth and success as well as emblems of piety. Well, not all the ostentatious rosaries in such portraits are coral: some are silver, often filigree. I'm sure these were considered equally expensive and showy, and they're also interesting because there's a bit more variation in their form than in the coral beads (which are usually plain rounds).

Here's a portrait of Kunigundus von Heimbach (born 1552 in Questenberg) by our old friend Bartholomeus Bruyn the Elder, who did a lot of such portraits:



This lady, painted in 1528 by "The Master H.B. with the Griffin Head" (Meister H B mit dem Greifenkopf), also has a rosary hanging from her belt:



Here's another one by Bruyn, dated around 1542:



And another (anonymous artist this time):



This one might be silver, it's hard to tell: the beads are round and photograph rather dark. They could also be jet or black glass.



And completely different from all the above, another portrait dated 1543, this one by Willem Key:

Big Berthas

In an idle moment (well, maybe several moments) with a fast Internet connection, I've tried to find all the examples I originally saw in the Marburg Photo Archive at Bildindex.de of the BIG red coral rosaries I mentioned in Big, Red, and German a while back.

I've been saying they're "fairly common" for the wives of prosperous burghers in the 1500s, but exactly what evidence do I have to back this up?

Here are some of the ones that first caught my attention. (Clicking on each of these takes you to the 600k original photo at Bildindex):

All of these are by Bartolomaeus Bruyn the Elder (1493-1555), from Köln (Cologne), who painted at least twenty portraits of this type (not all with rosaries). The Cranachs and other contemporaries also painted portraits in this style.

Quite a few of them, like the first one, are pairs of portraits of a husband and wife. Some of these are probably betrothal or marriage portraits, especially if the people shown are young, or holding rings or flowers. Others may simply be tokens of middle-aged economic success.

Here are more of the Big Berthas.

I just found this one (1536, painter unknown):



This one is by Joos van Cleve:



Here is an unusually late one (1632) by Christiaen van Couwenbergh, whose usual portrait style is quite different. Seemingly this was a client who wanted something old-fashioned:



And for amusement, here's one being held by a doll!

Big, red, and German

One of the rosary fashions of the 16th century is for what I call the Honking Big Red Rosary . I've collected several portraits, most of which seem to be from the Germanies and Flanders, of ladies holding or wearing rosaries that appear to be at least two feet long -- and that's just the length of the loop, so the actual strand is at least twice that long.

When the portraits are in color, most of these rosaries are red, with gold or silver gauds. Red usually indicates red coral, extremely expensive both then and now. The gauds are at least as large as the other beads, and very often when you can see the whole thing there's also a pierced ball (a pomander, presumably) at least a couple of inches in diameter.



I've wondered for some time whether the beads were really that big, or whether the painters are exaggerating at the sitter's request -- the message being "Look what a big coral rosary my husband can afford." I haven't yet seen anything resembling a surviving example.

It's certainly possible that actual rosaries of this type could have been made of imitation coral rather than the real thing. Imitation precious stones and glass "pearls" are certainly common enough in period examples. There's a practical limitation, however: a string of beads of glass or semiprecious stone weighs half again as much as the same size of beads in coral. A string of 16-20mm beads of this size could weigh 11 or 12 ounces (3/4 of a pound), which might be too heavy to wear comfortably. Coral is much lighter than stone because it's basically constructed like bone, with lots of microscopic air spaces.

These big red rosaries are so spectacular that I just had to make a replica. I have a string of dyed "sponge coral" 16mm beads, and one pierced silver bead, which I've strung into a version of such a rosary (pictured below). I pushed a little bag made of nylon mesh into the "pomander" and inserted small bits of clove, cinnamon and allspice that would fit through the bead's opening, then sewed the bag closed. So the whole thing smells a little like mulled cider :).



So far I've been unsuccessful at finding silver gauds in the right size range that look good and go with the pierced bead I already have. It appears to be from India, so I'll keep looking: I expect a really big gem show is what I need to find.