The Cabbage-noster

An excellent thing I've experienced this past year -- through correspondence, websites and the publication of Bedes Byddyng -- is more people becoming aware of paternoster beads and their history.

One result: more people making paternosters for themselves, especially people interested in medieval history and crafts.

I love it when people send me pictures, and this is one of my favorites. This "Cabbage-noster" and photo are by laurelfactorial, who gave me permission to feature it here.

The maker says this was an early effort, but it's still very cute. Really, the beads that look like cabbages are supposed to be roses. They are flat pieces carved on the front with semi-natural-looking rose petals, from various colored semi-precious stones. I first saw these in bead catalogs a couple of years ago, and now there are pages of them in every imaginable size and material. (A couple of examples here)


Hers look especially cabbage-like because they happen to be green. I think her small ones are probably serpentine (sold as "new jade" but softer and cheaper than real jade) and the large one might be green jasper. Her Ave beads are alternating rock crystal and black onyx, and it's strung on a green silk ribbon.

Aside from being amusing, this is an exercise in creative interpretation from the rather limited historical information on paternoster beads. As I have often pointed out, there are very few surviving paternoster beads from the Middle Ages, and documentary evidence isn't exactly thick on the ground either.

The ideal in historical re-creation is to find out what "they" did in the Middle Ages and simply do the same. But when we don't know all the details (and we often don't), we have to start from what we've got and make deductions, extrapolations, and some inspired guesses. And the fact that we can't re-create things perfectly is no reason not to try.

The first question to be answered is often whether the technology and knowledge were available in a particular time and place to make it possible to create the thing we are looking at. In the case of the "Cabbage-noster," on the whole it seems likely.

We know there were beads of rock crystal, though they were much more expensive than nowadays. Black stones similar to onyx were also used for paternoster beads by the wealthy. The carved "cabbages" were also quite possible with medieval technology. While the modern "roses" are probably machine cut, the technology certainly existed to carve such things by hand, as demonstrated by other cut stones, for instance a paternoster from Salzburg of bright turquoise-colored jasper whose beads are carved with spiraling facets.

A second question to ask when re-creating historical artifacts is whether the modern re-creation is plausible -- whether it would be unremarkable if it dropped through a time machine into the century and location of the originals. This is much harder to answer, because it depends on a number of things, including artistic style and which materials are used for which parts of the artifact.

In this case we see the effect of the modern marketplace on our attempt to do reconstructions. As a general rule, the materials used for the Paters or marker beads of a rosary are higher in value or social status than those used for the Aves or ordinary beads. Today, rock crystal and onyx cost about the same as jasper, but in the Middle Ages, rock crystal was a very high-status stone, more valuable even than amber or red coral. So when we see it in period rosaries it is usually only as marker beads.

Another question is whether period rosaries used two alternating types of beads in the Aves. I think the jury is still out on this one. I certainly can't say this was "never" done, but I can only find two examples, and both of them are very doubtful. One is a hand-colored woodcut, where the beads in the kneeling people's hands have been hand-colored alternating green and white. This may very well just represent the whim of the hand wielding the paint brush.

The other is this set of beads, from a painting of about 1500 from the area around Ulm:



There certainly appear to be differences in the Ave beads here, but I'm not sure what, if anything, they represent. There seem to be at least three different colors of beads (other than the markers, which are all gold and swirly) and they don't seem to be in a regular pattern. Actually, we know this is probably not a realistically painted set of actual beads, since the plain beads are in groups of 10, 7, 10 and 6, which doesn't match any pattern of prayers I'm familiar with. So I'd be reluctant to accept this as evidence.

(I don't seem to have the full context for this painting, by the way, so if anyone can help me identify what it is and who painted it, I'd be grateful.)

As for artistic style, my main question would be whether medieval carved roses look like these: and by and large, they don't seem to. I found this example from Exeter Cathedral, probably carved in the late 13th or 14th century:



As you see, the roses are carved to show the entire face of the flower. This is different than the more modern style of the carved roses used in the "cabbage-noster" where the flower is seen from an angle, with several petals obscuring the flower center.

I don't mean to be critical of the "cabbage-noster" here; I think it's an interesting experiment and a good effort. But I wanted to use this as an example to explore some of the ways in which we approach making educated guesses about medieval prayer beads in the process of making our own.

My friends who study heraldry have evolved a rule of thumb, informally called the "rule of two weirdnesses." According to this, designing a new piece of heraldry that shows one departure from known period practice (one "weirdness") is a reasonable level of extrapolation and will probably produce something that could pass the "dropped through a time machine" test. However, when you get to two "weirdnesses," there's much more ground for doubt whether the result is really going to look acceptably medieval.

We are not medieval people and we don't know everything, so every reconstruction we make will be full of approximations and compromises. The important thing is to know what compromises we're making and to make the best ones we can.

Mystery solved!

You may recall awhile back I posted about a mystery painting that I wanted to identify, especially since a closeup of a detail shows a figure -- probably a woman -- with a very interesting set of paternoster beads. Here it is again:



The mystery has been solved! Elizabeth Alles wrote me recently to say she'd found the source: an altarpiece of the Adoration of the Magi, by Stefan Lochner, in the cathedral in Köln (Cologne, Germany).



Sure enough, there is my Mystery Lady, in the left wing of the open altarpiece, over there at the far left margin:



The best closeup view I can get from the online images is this:


There are two particularly interesting things about the beads in this painting. One, here's another instance of red coral beads with (this time) especially clearly painted gauds of clear, colorless rock crystal. I'm keeping track of instances of this combination, because it seems to be a favorite attribute of saints and holy people in paintings.

Also, here's a straight string of Christian prayer beads -- not a closed loop -- being carried by a woman. While I've seen women with this type of beads before, it's not at all common: generally women have loops and the straight strings belong to men. But not always, as this painting shows!

According to the Web Gallery of Art, this altarpiece was painted in the 1440s, not for the Cathedral (where it is now) but for the town council's chapel in City Hall. Though it doesn't look particularly large in the photos, it's huge -- more than 8 feet tall (260 cm). This explains why it's painted in sufficient detail that a small snippet of it, like the "mystery hands" bit above, is clear enough to use as the cover of a book. (This is on the cover of one of my main reference books, 500 Jahre Rosenkranz: 1475-1975.)

Not a lot is known about the life and work of Stefan Lochner, the painter. He was born in Meersburg am Bodensee in about 1400, and died in Köln in 1451, probably of the plague. There's considerably more information about him and about this painting in the notes from a University of Wisconsin art history course taught by Prof. Jane C. Hutchison a few years ago, available online here. A lot of his paintings are still in Cologne.

As for identifying the people in the painting, both wings of the altarpiece seem to show saints and holy people witnessing the central scene. Interestingly, only one figure on each side seems to have a halo. Why?

On the left, the haloed figure is almost certainly Saint Ursula, since she has that saint's attributes of a royal crown (Ursula was supposedly a princess) and an arrow (by which she and her companions were martyred). So it's likely that all the other women in the front rows of the crowd, including the lady with the beads, represent some of Saint Ursula's eleven thousand companions.

There are other people in the back who clearly have some other identity, since we can see their hats: there's a bishop's miter, and next to him a rather beehive-shaped hat worn by someone carrying a staff topped with a cross. I'd think that was a Pope, except that his hat doesn't have three rows of crown-leaves on it as the Pope's hat classically does. (Dr. Hutchison suggests some identities in her article.)

Ursula is specifically one of the patron saints of Köln, since that's supposed to be where she and her companions were martyred. That might explain why she's the only one wearing a halo in this picture. The others might be holy people too, but she is clearly special.

Logic would then suggest that the haloed man on the other wing of the triptych might be a special male patron of Köln. And sure enough, there is one: Saint Gereon (d. ca. 304), a Roman soldier, martyred with 290 others on order of the emperor Maximian for refusing to sacrifice to pagan gods to obtain victory in battle. (He's also the patron of people with headaches and migraines, a useful saint to know.) The figure in the triptych is certainly similar to other 15th-century German ideas of what a Roman soldier looked like: in fact, when I went to the saints index here, the image of Gereon is almost, but not quite, identical. The caption there says it's another image from a Köln painting (now in the Wallraf-Richartz Museum), this one by an unknown painter in about 1480.

There's a pleasing symmetry to the wings of this altarpiece, Ursula with her many companions on one side and Gereon with the rest of his regiment on the other.

I did scan the painting for other interesting rosary beads, but didn't see any offhand. I always look, because if one figure is carrying them, sometimes others will too.

More crystal gazing

a short note

I'm always pleased when another example turns up of an unusual type of rosary -- especially when it's something I've spotted, analyzed, and worked out an explanation for myself (and most especially when it turns out I was right!).

This happened recently when someone mentioned to me that there was a beautiful rock crystal rosary on display as part of the Victoria and Albert Museum's recent exhibition, "At Home in Renaissance Italy."

There was indeed, and here's a picture, with a link to the relevant page of the exhibit's website:



This rosary is from 16th-century Italy, and is in the Museo Civico d'Arte Antica e Palazzo Madama, Turin. The brief description on the V&A's page says it is made from rock crystal, painted and gilded, with pearls and gilded silver mounts.

The person who mentioned it to me (thanks, Aurelia!) said she'd found it fascinating because each spherical bead is made from two halves, each of which had images painted on the inside.



This may -- I hope it does -- remind you of my series of posts called "Crystal Gazing" awhile back (listed below). That appeared to be exactly how those beads were constructed, but the photos showed each bead separately, laid flat, so I was able to identify most of the images.

You can't see images very well in this Turin example, just bits of color, but it gives you an idea of how the Marburg photos might look if we could see that one in color too. Wow. I'd love to see details.

It's a bit odd the way it's currently assembled. First of all, it's strung on metal chain, and I doubt this was the original method, which means it's been re-strung. No surprise there: most surviving rosaries have. Most rosaries made with chain are not really strung on the chain, but instead have a wire link through each bead with a loop on each end, which hooks into the next link, making the bead itself part of the chain. This chain, however, looks more as if the beads are simply strung onto it like a thread.

The beads are similar enough to each other that it's likely they all came from the same original, and the cross too looks likely to be from the same source, especially if (as it seems to be) it's been painted in the same way as the beads. However, there's a good possibility the beads are not in their original position or arrangement. The images might give us some hints, if we could identify them. Also, the thirteen beads seen here may or may not be the original number, since many historical pieces have lost some of their parts.

When I first saw a set of beads with 10 in a circle like this, I was certain it was a modern construction, since I haven't seen this sort of thing pictured in historical paintings or diagrams. Most times when you see ten beads, especially large ones, they are in a straight string (called in German a Zehner -- see Counting to Ten). But recently I've seen several more examples, which makes me wonder if this might be a form that dates back further than I thought. More evidence one way or another might be nice.

The arrangement where the loop joins also looks peculiar. My guess is that this may be the remains of a "credo cross," originally five beads arranged as a cross, one having been lost. Whether this was part of the original rosary or whether it's been added as part of the process of reconstructing something plausible, who can say.

As ever, this leaves me itching to see this rosary in person and take lots of well-lit close-up photos to study. Legend has it that all historical costumers wish for the mythical book called "Hey, Lady -- Turn Around!" that shows the back and side views of all the costumes worn in portraits, so we can see exactly how they're constructed. Me, I want to see a mythical book on other artifacts, called, "Hey -- Turn It Over!"

previous posts on a similar rosary:

Crystal Gazing I
Crystal Gazing II
Crystal Gazing III

Crystal gazing III

WHO'S WHO AMONG THE SAINTS, PART 2

More saints, and more mysteries!

BEAD 5

One of the problems in identifying saints on these beads is that I can't be sure whether a set of beads like this would repeat the same saint more than once. There are, for instance, two saints named John (7.2 and 2.1) -- which could be the same saint twice, or two different Johns.

(5.1) In the same way, bead 5 is one of three places that have a saint whose name seems to be "MATHEUS", which could either refer to Saint Matthew the Evangelist, or to Saint Matthias (Judas Iscariot's replacement as an apostle). In favor of Matthias on this bead is the fact that he's carrying a halberd.

At any rate, the woman on this bead is clearly Saint Barbara. You can see her tower over at the right-hand edge of the bead.



(5.2) This side is also fairly clear, with Saint Thomas (a.k.a. "Doubting" Thomas) on the left with a spear, and Saint Helen on the right with the True Cross, which legend says she located in Jerusalem.

BEAD 4

(4.1) Here things start to get more difficult. The fact that the smaller beads are more difficult to decipher could simply be due to the difficulties of photography, but it's also possible they may be more worn. If so, this suggests to me that the original owner may have fingered the smaller beads more often, thus perhaps wearing them out sooner. Whether this would mean these were the beads closer to the wearer's belt or the beads at the bottom or "loose" end of the string I can't tell -- you could make a logical argument for either position. Comparison with other straight paternosters, however, suggests most of them have the largest beads at the bottom.

By the way, I owe considerable thanks to the folks who have made suggestions about the identity of some of these "mystery saints," especially those on the medieval-religion list at jiscmail.co.uk.



I, and several of these good people, all think that the woman on the right on this bead (4.1)is probably Saint Clara (of Assisi). The name looks like hers, and she is carrying what looks like a small lantern with something inside, which would be the monstrance (glass-walled container for the consecrated bread) with which she is supposed to have frightened off the Saracens who were about to attack her convent.

The gentleman on the left is a mystery. The only one of the twelve apostles who seems to be missing from this set is Saint James the Less, but he could either be here or down on bead 1 (one side of which is completely indecipherable).

(4.2) On the left, this appears to be Saint Simon. He is clearly holding a saw (symbol of his martyrdom) and the letters S and M are visible on his ribbon.



It's harder to tell who is on the right. Whoever it is seems to be holding a small, flat cross, and although the curator's notes suggest Saint Jude, I actually do think this might be a woman. The hair is quite long and wavy down the figure's back, and the neckline of the gown appears to be gathered -- which seems to be more characteristic of women than men in this style of art. The letters Y (or V) S A are visible on the ribbon. No popular saint with this letter combination springs to my mind (of course, no sooner do I post this than I will think of one!).

BEAD 3

(3.1) I and several other readers agree this is Saint Jude Thaddeus (S . I U D A S) and Saint Agatha (A G A T A). Saint Jude is often shown with a carpenter's square, but here he seems to have a staff. It's possible that the white blob just below the hole in the bead is one of Saint Agatha's cut-off breasts that she is holding -- she is frequently shown holding them cheerfully on a tray in front of her, looking rather like muffins!



(3.2) On the left here is one of the three "Matthew" labeled saints (S . M A T E U) This does appear to be Saint Matthew the Evangelist because he is holding a book, and he has covered his hands so he is not touching the book directly. This is a gesture of reverence, suggesting this book may represent Matthew's Gospel.

The woman on the right appears to be rather clearly named "Afra" (A F R A) and seems to be tied to something I can't quite make out by a rope around her wrists. I had never heard of her, but apparently she is a martyr from the time of the Emperor Diocletian (ca. 300AD) from Bavaria -- which explains her presence on a German paternoster. According to her biography, she was burned at the stake.

BEAD 1

I'm going to skip bead 2 for the moment and go directly to bead 1, the smallest. This bead is clearly either the most difficult to photograph or in the worst shape, because only one of the four saints on it seems to be decipherable. I can't see anything at all useful on side 1, although there's enough lettering visible to suggest it might be more readable if I were holding it and could see past the glare.



(1.2) The other side is just a bit better. I can at least make out a few of the letters on the ribbons. The woman on the right might be Saint Agnes (A ? G ?) with a lamb -- though the accidents of photography make the white area in front of her look rather more like a teddy bear to me. On the left, I can make out letters that look like E G (or C) M (or W) but this doesn't suggest anything offhand.

BEAD 2

(2.1)This is getting rather long, but I wanted to get to bead 2 because it seems to have a "theme" of its own. On side 1 are the third Matthew ( _ A T H V S) with his "winged man" symbol clearly visible below, and Saint Mark (S. M A R C U _) with the head of his lion down by his feet.



(2.2) The second side has a rather clear Luke on the left (S. L U C A S), although if there is a winged ox around anywhere I don't see it. Poor Saint John on the right is nearly blotted out by glare, but the letters S. J O H (or N) are just visible on the ribbon. The curator's notes suggest this is Saint John the Baptist, but with three of the four Evangelists located on this bead, it would make more sense for this to be Saint John the Evangelist.

If so, then perhaps the John on bead 7 might be John the Baptist. I don't see any useful symbols on that bead, but the male figure is standing, partly leaning on a staff, and gesturing widely with a hand holding what looks like a rolled-up piece of paper. The Gospels are more often symbolized by large, heavy books, so perhaps this is not an evangelist.

Having "disposed of" one of the three Matthews by identifying him on bead 5 as Saint Matthias, we are still left with two. I actually do think that Saint Matthew the Evangelist is in this string of beads twice, and here's why.

Whoever designed these beads seems to have been doing several things at once. One was to provide images of a list of generally popular saints, including Barbara, Dorothy, Margaret, and probably all 12 apostles (Matthias replacing Judas). Less common or more regional saints like Afra, perhaps Clara and maybe one or more of the ones we can't see may have been specially requested by the owner. The third "program" was to include a few more general images related to the stories of Creation and salvation, such as the images on the two largest beads.

So perhaps it did not seem odd to the original owner that a few saints might appear twice: once in the list of popular saints and again in their "proper place" as one of the Evangelists.

There's another possible explanation, something I've seen happen to a few of the surviving "Passion" rosaries -- a past curator may have assembled one "complete" item from the bits and pieces of more than one original. When I see a Passion rosary that has the unusual number of 12 decades and duplicates several of the symbols, I strongly suspect that's what happened. In the case of these rock-crystal beads, I think that's far less likely. These are fairly elaborate and expensive, and I would guess that they might have been custom-made. Beads from another set would stand out as different, or would not fit neatly into the sequence of sizes.

This is a unique and fascinating piece -- almost as fascinating as the carved ivory rosary belonging to a Bishop Fugger in Augsburg, which I hope to talk about another time. Unfortunately there are far fewer pictures of that one.

Crystal gazing II

In my last post, Crystal Gazing, I was taking a close look at an interesting and complex rock-crystal paternoster I discovered while browsing through the Schnutgen Museum collection on Bildindex.

I was in rather a hurry, and I realize I missed a few points.

First, here's how I'm interpreting the structure of these beads -- as near as one can tell from a photo, that is. This is supposed to be a cross-section through a single bead as strung on the original cord. I don't know whether it's correct, but it's my best guess.



I forgot to mention a date for this piece. The museum label says it is 17th century: as usual, there's no indication of who determined this or on the basis of what evidence, if any. I am not an art expert, but it looks earlier than that to me -- be that as it may.

And I forgot to say anything about size. A couple of the beads were photographed with a ruler, which looks like it is marked in millimeters (it's not labeled). If that's so, it would indicate the largest bead of this series is a little over an inch across.

WHO'S WHO AMONG THE SAINTS, PART 1

Now back to the beads. (I'm showing you all the photos, enhanced as best I can, but in order to see the details, you will probably have to click on the photos to see the enlarged version: at least, you will if you have eyes like mine!)

Only two of the ten beads in this rock-crystal paternoster have scenes related to Christ, Mary or Biblical stories. All the others show saints -- at least, all the ones that can be deciphered.

Each face of each of the remaining eight beads seems to show two saints, most of them in a standing position, and the painter has thoughtfully identified each one for us with a vertical ribbon bearing the saint's name. Many, but not all, of the pairs have a male saint on the left as we look at the bead (in heraldry this "dexter" position is the position of greater status) and a woman saint on the right.

Besides the name labels, many of the saints bear recognizable symbols. There is a fairly universal "code" of these symbols in medieval Europe, which specifies that many popular saints are always shown holding or carrying some particular object. This makes them easy to identify even for the illiterate, or where they aren't so thoughtfully labeled.

Since we've already discussed beads 10 and 9, I'll start with bead 8 and make a few comments. Bildindex has photos of both faces of all the beads, which I've cleaned up as much as I can to show here.

BEAD 8

Side 8.1: Saints Peter and Veronica. Less clear, but Saint Peter has his keys and Saint Veronica is displaying her napkin, on which the face of Christ is imprinted. (In legend, this occurred when she offered her napkin to wipe Christ's face on his way to the Crucifixion.)



Side 8.2: Saints Andrew and Margaret. If you squint, you can more or less see that Saint Andrew is carrying some large pieces of wood, which constitute his distinctive X-shaped cross. Saint Margaret is standing on (actually emerging from) a dragon, whose head you can see below her to the left. Considering that legend says she was swallowed by the dragon and then burst out by splitting the dragon's stomach open, the dragon looks remarkably lively!

BEAD 7

7.1: Saints (?) and Dorothy. Saint Dorothy very clearly has her basket of roses (from heaven), but the male saint of this pair is rather obscure. We'll get back to him in a minute.



7.2: Saints John (?) and Catherine. Catherine has her spiked wheel beside her. But which John is this? The museum curators suggest it's Saint John the Evangelist (author of the Gospel of John).

A plausible guess is that this ought to be John the Evangelist, based on the conventional order in which the twelve Apostles of Christ are named: Peter, Andrew, James, John. Bead 8 has Peter and Andrew, making it reasonable that the next bead would have James and John. This would make the "mystery man" on side 1 of this bead Saint James the Greater, and that's who I think it is. There isn't much visible through the glare, but I think he is wearing his distinctive pilgrim's hat, although we can't see whether he has the pilgrim's staff, drinking gourd and scallop shell that go with it. John, on side 2, is standing with his mouth open (preaching?) and clasps a scroll in his right hand. If he had any of John the Evangelist's other emblems nearby (an eagle, a chalice, or a cauldron of boiling oil!), that would clinch the identification.

BEAD 6

6.1: Saint Bartholomew and Saint Mary Magdalen. Because I already know what it looks like, I can see Saint Bartholomew's broad-bladed butcher's knife in his right hand -- legend says he was flayed alive. I actually don't see the alabaster jar of ointment that I would expect Mary Magdalen to be carrying, but her name is quite clear. Legend identifies Mary of Magdala with the woman who anointed Jesus' feet, although more modern scholars think they were probably two different women.



6.2: Saints Philip and Ursula. Saint Philip has his cross-topped staff. Saint Ursula is wearing a crown -- legend has it that she was a king's daughter -- although I can't see whether she has any other attributes or not. She is often shown either with arrows (by which she was supposed to have been martyred) or with a few of the 11,000 other maidens supposedly martyred with her. Clearly they would not all fit on this small bead!

-------------------------------------------------------

All of these things would probably be a lot clearer if I had these beads in my hand and could tilt them back and forth to see what's under the spots of glare. If the paintings are in color, that would help too. Since I'm hoping my next research trip will be to Germany, these are on my list of artifacts I'd like to see and photograph close up.

I'll try to disentangle the rest of the saints in the next post.
(to be continued...)

Crystal gazing

Once in awhile I have time to just go randomly searching through likely places in search of rosaries I haven't seen. Bildindex, the index to the Marburg Foto Archive, for instance, is very poorly indexed, and while rosaries are most commonly filed under "Schmuck" (jewelry), they are sometimes in quite different categories. So a bit of browsing is often worthwhile.

I recently took a look through the Bildindex photos from the Schnutgen Museum in Köln (Cologne, Germany) with just this in mind. I knew this museum had quite a few religious artifacts, since I'd already found a lot of interesting "skull" beads there (which I discussed in this series of posts last fall).(And by the way, the exhibition that just opened this week there is on "Beauty to die for! Old age, the Dance of Death and funereal art from 1500 to the present day".)

Sure enough, when I looked under "Glas" in the materials list, something very interesting turned up:



This is a "Zehner," a rosary (or paternoster) of ten beads, a type often carried by Renaissance men. In typical fashion, it has a cross at one end and something else at the other: in this case, though it's hard to tell from the photo, it looks as though it's just a large fancy metal bead. (My guess would be gilded silver.)

It's filed under "glass" because according to the photo caption, the ten beads are made from painted "Bergkristall" (rock crystal). Natural rock crystal is not glass, of course, but the two are very similar: natural rock crystal is harder than glass, but some pieces that don't show either the natural flaws of rock crystal or the tiny air bubbles common in glass can only be told apart by testing their hardness. Unlike glass, rock crystal was a high-status material, ranking up there with red coral in the social scale, just below gold and silver.

These are old photos and not terribly clear, but as near as I can tell, each "bead" is shaped like a fat lentil or doughnut, with a hole through the center. Each bead seems to be made from two halves, held together by a narrow metal rim. (Imagine the halves of a sliced bagel, ready to spread cream cheese on it.)

In the overall photo above, I think the beads have just been laid out in a row, flat on the table, for the purpose of being photographed. I would expect that if the beads were assembled into a string, the way the owner probably carried them around, they would be threaded through the center holes onto a cord -- but of course if they were photographed that way, you couldn't see the scenes painted on each one very well. Supporting this, when I look at the close-up photos of each individual bead, I don't see anything that would enable them to be attached to each other by their edges.

The beads are nicely graduated in size, so there's no doubt about which order they go in, or which photos are the two sides of the same bead. Not all the paintings are readable, especially the smaller ones, though I don't know how much of this is because of worn paint and how much of it is just the way they were photographed, where certain areas are obscured by glare.

Interestingly, only the two largest beads have scenes directly relating to the Bible; all the others show saints. The largest bead has a very clear Annunciation scene on one side, and on the other a rather cryptic scene -- notes on the museum label indicate the curators weren't quite sure what it is either. It shows a robed male figure with a diamond-shaped, radiant halo, kneeling and holding both the hands of a naked woman. (It's very clearly a woman, which I presume is why their first guess at identification, the baptism of Christ, has been crossed out!) The current label suggests this is the Creation of Eve, and with a bit of imagination you can make out the sleeping figure of Adam at the bottom, with Eve emerging from his side. The sun, moon and stars in the sky also suggest this is a Creation scene.





The next largest bead has the Crucifixion on one side, and on the other, Christ the Savior and what's known in German as "Anna Selbdritt": Saint Anne holding both the Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus. (Saint Anne is traditionally the name of the Virgin Mary's mother, Christ's grandmother.)





(to be continued...)