The Bishop's beads: a terrestial sphere

Bishop Jakob, part 3

Previous posts in this series:
The beads of Bishop Jakob
The Bishop's beads: a celestial sphere

The biggest of these beads, as we saw in the last post, was engraved to represent a celestial sphere. The next bead (#10) is clearly a "terrestrial" sphere, showing continents and oceans in a more or less familiar fashion. I at first thought we were looking at Eurasia and a rather fragmentary Africa in this closeup view, but comparing it with other views, it appears those are on the other side of the globe, where they appear in something close to their actual outlines. This view, then, is probably supposed to be North and South America, with the southeastern parts of North America rather enlarged and bulgy and a number of vague island-like things that are probably supposed to be Caribbean islands and bits of the South American continent.



Frustratingly, in a very close view it's clear that the continents have lettering all over them, but I can't read any of it with one exception: down near the South Pole a large peninsula of the southern continent (now Antarctica, but I don't know if that was actually known yet) is appropriately labeled TERRA INC?G?TA -- almost certainly "terra incognita" (unknown land). (Yeah, I know. Big help.)

Two inscriptions in the southern ocean area say ___BERANV? SIVE CAPRIC___, which I would expect to have something to do with the Tropic of Capricorn, and CIRCVLVM INSVLA ("circle of the island"?), which I can't make any sense of offhand. You could say I'm out of my depth here :)

There is also lettering around the Antarctic Circle, similar to what we saw on the other bead, but only a letter here and there is readable -- I'm not even entirely certain which way up the letters are. I think I can see a T, a space, and what might be VM, but nothing is recognizable.



Aha! I had this post all drafted when it occurred to me to check one more source: the catalog (500 Jahre Rosenkranz) to the 1975 rosary exhibition in Cologne, Germany. Yes, there is a bit more information, and most notably, the name of the artist who engraved these beads: Antonio Spano.

The Pierpont Morgan Library in New York has another small ivory globe engraved by Spano (no picture online that I can find, unfortunately) dating from 1593. Spano signed his name on that globe "Antonius Spano tropiensis," the last word giving his home city as Tropes (near Naples). He was granted a pension by King Philip II of Spain in 1595 and died in Spain in 1615 -- which, if nothing else, tells us that Bishop Jakob's beads must pre-date that. And they might very well date from before his installation as bishop in 1604.

Hmmm. Spano signed the Morgan Library globe just below the Antarctic Circle. I wonder if the lettering in that location on Bishop Jakob's bead is his signature here too?

What can be seen of the engravings on the other beads is rather cryptic. What I can see on Bead #9 looks like land and water areas with a lot of "lollipop" shaped trees. This could represent the separation into land and water areas in Genesis 1:9, or more likely (considering what's on the next bead) this could be the creation of plants (Genesis 1:11): "Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so."

Bead #8 has a very clear sun with long rays near its "north" end, which could represent the verses about the creation of sun, moon and stars (Genesis 1:16): "And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also." In one of the other photos, the other side of this bead appears to be engraved with a field of stars.

The rest of the description of these beads from 500 Jahre Rosenkranz doesn't provide a whole lot more detail. It says:
Elfenbeinperlern mit Darstellungen aus den Prophetien der Karsamstagsliturgie, Erschaffung der Welt, Sündenfall, Arche Noe und anderen alttestamentlichen Szenen; gravierter Haltering; Credocreuz mit Maria und den vier Evangelisten.

Rough translation:
"Ivory beads with interpretations of the prophetic readings(?) of the Holy Saturday (Easter) liturgy: the Creation of the World, the Fall, Noah's Ark and other Old Testament scenes; [also] an engraved end-ring, [and] a Credo cross with Mary and the four Evangelists."

This doesn't actually give a whole lot more details for "decoding" the scenes on the remaining beads, but it does mention that Noah's Ark and the Garden of Eden are in there somewhere. Which means we don't have to look for an exact correspondence between each bead and one of the seven Days of Creation: the interpretation of "stories from Genesis" gives a lot more latitude.



Beads #7, 6, 5, and 4 are very hard to decode from these photos, although there is at least one pair of human legs on bead #4 -- they look as though they might be climbing a ladder. That might be the construction of Noah's Ark. There are also people visible on beads #3 and 2. I'm willing to believe there are engravings of Mary and the Evangelists on the cross, but I can't see any more than faint traces of engravings in any of the photos.

The punchline (if I can call it that) to this long description is: these are the only photos I've found of this piece, and we really can't tell very much from them. Unless someone else can point me to more photos somewhere, it sounds rather as though I'm going to have to track this paternoster down myself and take my own photos.

The good news is that it looks as though that's going to be possible in March. I'm currently planning a research trip to Germany for the last two weeks of March, and I *think* I am going to be able to get to Konstanz, which is where these beads probably still are. (I'll check first, of course.)

The Bishop's beads: a celestial sphere

(Bishop Jakob, part 2)

In The beads of Bishop Jakob, I started to discuss an ivory paternoster that belonged to the early 17th-century bishop of Konstanz, Jakob Fugger. [Was that really two months ago? Gack.] The photos I have of this aren't very good, but I'm going to explore whatever details we can see in them. If anyone knows of better pictures or publications about these beads, I'd really like to know about them.

First, I'd been searching for a portrait of the bishop himself, and finally found one when it occurred to me to look at Wikimedia Commons, a rapidly expanding source of images that I don't think I've mentioned before. A search on his name didn't turn up anything (for some reason) but here he is, filed under "Bishops of Konstanz":



If you click on the link at Wikimedia Commons that magnifies the picture, it says in the corner that this was painted in 1598 and that our fellow was 30 years old at the time.

So. Back to the beads.

When I showed a slide of these beads in a paper I gave last spring, someone pointed out something I hadn't mentioned: unlike most of the other paternosters I was using as examples, but like a lot of later ones, this one is constructed with wire links, rather than as beads threaded on a cord. This construction seems to have come into fashion in the very early 17th century, based on the few other examples I've seen. It's almost universal in modern rosaries (except those that are threaded on modern flexible bead wire, which I'll talk about someday I promise).



Wire chain construction is generally more resistant to breaking. My experience with wearing threaded rosaries is that even when the thread is very strong silk, it's still rather prone to wear and tear, and also will snap if it catches on something. The disadvantage of wire links is that a wire chain is prone to kinking when it's twisted, and can be tricky to untangle; and of course, you also can't slide the beads along the thread as you count them but instead must move your fingers along the entire chain of beads.

Bishop Jakob's beads are graduated in size, something I was asked about the other day. To the extent that I can generalize from what beads look like in paintings, I've only seen this on short straight strings or "tenners" like this one. Prayer beads in loop form are usually shown with all beads approximately the same size (except for the marker beads). When a tenner has graduated bead sizes, as here, the end with bigger beads always seems to be the bottom, the end furthest away from the wearer's body.

In here somewhere I should also mention that I'm not convinced we have this entirely in its original state. As we currently have it, there is a ring, a cross, and eleven beads, probably representing ten Aves and one Pater Noster. This is quite a logical arrangement and seems complete for prayer purposes. However, there is a wire loop at the bottom of the eleventh bead, which is now bent over, but which could have originally connected to something else. It seems unlikely that more beads were involved, but there might very well have been a tassel, or a medal or other ornament.

There are a grand total of four photos of this paternoster in the Marburg Foto Index. Three show the entire string, and two of these seem to have been taken from the same side of the piece, probably at different times. The remaining overview seems to be an attempt to show the other side, although some of the beads appear to be turned through perhaps 120 degrees, some more and some apparently not at all.

The fourth photo is a close-up of just the two largest beads. This is the only photo big enough that I can read any of the lettering, and even so I can't really be certain exactly what is going on with the motifs, though I can make some guesses.



The museum label on the photos says they are engraved with "Szenen aus der Schöpfungsgeschichte" (scenes from the Creation Story). From what I can see of the two largest beads, bead #11 (the biggest) seems to be a celestial sphere, and bead #10 next to it, a terrestrial sphere. This could represent the first words of the Biblical account, which starts, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth."

On the celestial sphere, you can see the two bands crossing each other around the middle that represent the celestial equator and the plane of the ecliptic, and the rest of the surface seems to be covered with drawings representing constellations (and dots that might represent individual stars). In the center of the view we can see a very well drawn ship, representing Argo Navis (the Ship, no longer recognized as a constellation). To its left is a dog, labeled CANIS MAJOR, and to the right is the outline of Centaurus, the Centaur. Above the Ship and Centaur is part of Hydra, the snake, and the little bird that appears to be perched on the snake's back must be Corvus (the Crow). These are all Southern Hemisphere constellations, so I had to look them up -- I'm a bit more familiar with northern ones. These appear backwards from what's shown on modern star maps, because unlike most modern maps, we're seeing them as though we were on the outside of the "heavenly sphere." (Modern star maps show our actual view, from the inside.)



There is undoubtedly a lot more detail here -- these photos show faint tracings of lettering here and there, though often not enough to be readable. Apparently the beads were engraved, and then the engraved lines were filled with ink. Where the beads have been handled a lot, the ink has rubbed off. Probably some of the engraving has also been worn down, but I'd expect to be able to see a lot more of it if I had the actual beads in front of me, rather than a photo.

What I can read on the "celestial" bead is the CANIS MAJOR label and a few bits around the bead's "south pole" where there is still ink. A scribed circle is labeled CIRCVLVS ANTARCTICVS for the Antarctic Circle, and to the left are letters just outside that circle that I think say DEVS CREAVIT TERRAM (the two R's are fairly clear, the rest more fragmentary, but "terram" would fit what's there).

Also, upside down from the CIRCVLVS inscription, just to the right of the bead's central hole, are two short lines that I think say something like SOLST ITIORUM (with a little imaginative reconstruction). It appears to be labeling a particular point on the circle, or an inscribed line that runs north from that point to perhaps the "north pole." I can't see enough of what is in that area to tell much more than that. None of the other views of this bead are clear enough to show any lettering as more than a series of fuzzy dots. Hopefully someone who knows more astronomy than I do can explain this to me. (Whatever I used to know is rather rusty; I've had to look up most of this constellation stuff as I went along.)

(to be continued)

The beads of Bishop Jakob

One of the more spectacular surviving paternosters -- and one that I wish I had much better photos of -- is a set of ten ivory beads from the cathedral of Konstanz in Germany (located in Germany's south-west corner, less than 1 km from the Swiss border at the western end of Lake Constance). So far, the only pictures I've been able to find are at the Marburg Foto Index.



As with many photos from this source, these photos are black and white, not very recent, not very well lit and not very detailed. A good many of these photos are simply what the museums took when cataloguing their collections, perhaps as far back as the 1930s or 40s. It's likely that the actual photos are somewhat better than the scanned versions online, but what would really be needed for research purposes is a completely new (and much more extensive) set of photos, taken with professional lighting and a good modern camera.

There is hope, however. Any time an interesting piece is featured in an exhibit, it is likely to get at least one new picture taken, generally much better in quality than the old ones. This is particularly true when the exhibition produces a catalog. This set of beads would certainly be one of my nominees for Most Famous Rosaries of Europe, but I'm still waiting for new photos. The most recent exhibition of it that I can find is "500 Jahre Rosenkranz" in Köln (Cologne) in 1975, and that catalog seems to have used one of the old photos.

These are a bit later than the medieval beads I usually discuss in my "historical" posts. They probably date from shortly after 1600 and were left to the cathedral in Konstanz by the bishop who served there from 1604-1626.

One catalog description says they are "bone," but they are usually described as ivory, which I think is much more likely. They are very finely engraved, and ivory is far superior for this sort of thing, being both finer-grained and denser than ordinary bone.

Ivory is also a rich person's material: earlier in the Middle Ages, carved ivory was nearly as valuable as gold. Even a Renaissance piece like this is quite rare, especially as it seems to be complete and in very good condition.

All was explained when I looked at the label on the original photo from the Marburg and saw the name of the bishop who owned these beads: Jakob Fugger. No wonder he could afford them.

The Fuggers* were probably THE leading banking and mercantile family of Europe for nearly two centuries, roughly 1400 through 1600. They loaned money to emperors and Popes, and had a close relationship with the Hapsburgs, serving as personal bankers to Charles V. The later Fuggers became Counts and Princes of various territories.

Tracing which Jakob Fugger is which is a bit tricky, since the Fuggers were quite prolific, and sons in this family were routinely named for their uncles and grandfathers. In the six or seven generations during those two centuries, there were at least four previous Jakob Fuggers, along with three Ulrichs, two Georges, five Johanns and a Johann Jakob.

Bishop Jakob was a great-grand-nephew of the most famous Jakob Fugger, known as "Jakob the Rich" (d. 1525), who was probably, in relative terms, one of the richest people in Europe. He endowed almshouses in the Fuggers' home city of Augsburg that are still in existence. So even living in the 1600s, well after the Fuggers' peak of influence, Bishop Jakob must have been quite respectably wealthy.

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*The temptation toward bad puns on the family name is much less, BTW, when you know that "Fugger" rhymes approximately with "sugar," and not with "mugger."

I've also discussed other ivory carvings, of a rather different sort, in this series of posts.

to be continued

Tickling the ivories

One of the bits and pieces from my England trip in March that I've been meaning to talk about is this one, which I saw in the Victoria & Albert museum during my flying visit there.



This is labeled as a 15th- or 16th-century French rosary, and is made of ivory -- and so far at least, it hasn't turned up in the V&A online database when I've looked for it, which means I really don't have any more solid information on it.

A couple of comparable single beads do turn up when I search on "ivory" or "rosary." (I think I discussed at least one of them in the Voldemort posts last fall.) Unfortunately those don't have much information attached either, just notes that they are 16th century and might be German or Flemish.

As a set of rosary beads, the imagery of this piece is rather odd to modern eyes. The only two motifs I can find that are unambiguously religious are the two flat plaques, one clearly showing a haloed saint holding a chalice and communion bread, and the other showing a man in a three-tiered tiara, who I assume represents a Pope.



The wreathed head at the bottom looks more like the head of a Roman hero than like that of a contemporary European, and it certainly doesn't have any of the distinguishing characteristics that would make it a head of Christ.

However I think we begin to get some glimmerings of understanding when we see that the reverse of this bead is a skull. A living head on one side and a skull or cadaver's head on the other is a fairly common Renaissance motif, referred to as "memento mori" (Remember Death).



The rest of the beads look quite secular.



Last fall's "Voldemort" series of posts showed this somewhat comparable set of three beads (front and back). They are clearly related to each other, but two have skull or skeleton features on the back, and the third does not -- it's a man on one side and a woman on the other, but both representations of living people.

So one possibility is that in the V&A piece we are seeing, by accident or design, a set of beads that are related to the "memento mori" designs -- but in this case, all living faces, mostly without skulls.




Another possibility is suggested by this bead (both sides shown). This is also from the V&A but was not on display when I visited.



The fact that one side shows a woman with what appears to me to be a man's head on a plate suggests to me that this is supposed to represent Salome, with the head of John the Baptist. If this is a Biblical reference, the king on the other side could represent Herod. While none of the "secular" heads on the V&A rosary carry symbols that I can see, it's possible they may represent Biblical characters as well.

Seeing Biblical personages in 16th-century dress should be no surprise, as we have abundant examples of that in other forms of art in this period, including paintings and needlework pictures. In modern times, we almost always see Bible characters in conventionalized "robes" (which may or may not have anything to do with what they really wore in 1st-century Palestine!) and so it takes some effort for us to recognize these people in a 16th-century disguise.

I'm not completely satisfied with this explanation, however. I can't help wondering whether anyone has done a comprehensive study of this type of carved ivory "bead" to discover how they were actually made, regarded, and used in the 16th century.

Some of them, clearly, like the middle beads here, were designed as part of a "set" since they have matching decorative elements at top and bottom. That suggests they may indeed have been strung in sequence as we see here -- though whether for use as a rosary, or simply as a decorative necklace, I don't know. (If the Art Nouveau movement could make jewelry with stylized ladies' heads on it fashionable, without it meaning much of anything, Renaissance art could certainly do the same.)

But often one of these little ivory carvings will appear in a collection as a single item, not obviously related to anything else. Like other "precious" artifacts, these beads seem mostly to have been passed down from collector to collector for their artistic value, but not necessarily with any solid information on where they originally came from. We might know a lot more about them if they had come from a grave or archaeological dig, where we could see what they were lying next to.

Because they are assumed to be "rosary beads", I suspect restorers have been quick to take a group of them and arrange them into a "rosary", but I wonder how much evidence there is that this is how they were originally used. I have certainly seen at least one string (here) that is clearly made from beads from two or more different sources, and I can't help wondering if this V&A example is another.

Posts in this series:

Death's head devotions
Skully bits
Skulls: the inside story
Skulls: the inside story, part 2
Skulls: the inside story, part 3
Voldemort
Voldemort, part 2
A skull of one's own
Goth
More living color

Coffins

We seem to be getting a bit far afield from rosaries, but considering the interesting phenomenon of rosaries that use skulls (as they occasionally do) leads naturally to consideration of the other skull and skeleton "keepsakes" that are relatively common in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Especially since it's October :)

Another such "memento mori" object is the miniature coffin, which often opens to show a skeleton. Probably one of the better-known examples is the so-called Torre Abbey jewel from England (1540-1550, museum no. 3581-1856), now in the Victoria and Albert museum.



The point of having such a memento was that by remembering that death was inevitable and unpredictable, you would be motivated to live a virtuous life. This continued to be fashionable right through the 16th century.

Another example from the Victoria & Albert, which is rather more decorative with a fancy chain decorated with pairs of crossed bones, and colored black and white with enamel, is this one:



The museum's commentary notes that by the middle of the 17th century, the focus of skull, coffin and skeleton symbolism had changed -- from an abstract contemplation of death as motivation for virtue to commemorating the deaths of specific people, generally family members or loved ones.

The fashion began to turn then from memento-mori's toward mourning jewelry, with dates, initials or names, and eventually to such things as Victorian "hair jewelry" made from hair from the deceased. The impulse to create "relics," in the same way the Middle Ages treasured bits of hair, bone or clothing from saints, seems to be a recurring theme. Popular symbolism also turned from skulls and coffins toward weeping women, willow trees, gravestones and broken columns as symbols of loss.

But we are still in the Middle Ages in this discussion, and I found another very interesting coffin while roaming around in the Marburg Index, which I thought I'd share. Here is an overview:



According to the museum notes, this is ivory, from Western Switzerland around 1520. Like most of the memento-mori's I've been discussing, it's now in the Schnütgen Museum in Köln (Cologne), Germany. The skeleton is enclosed in a "box" composed of a solid base and lid in a rather eye-blinding black-and-white pattern, and open sides with narrow columns and wide spaces.

What's particularly notable about this one is that the skeleton isn't completely reduced to bones, but retains some "muscle tissue"(?) depicted in ivory on the top side, and through a hole in the stomach some "internal organs" can be seen.



I suppose ivory is such a wonderful material that it manages to make even such revolting details look eerily beautiful, but my modern sense of appropriateness still says "Eeeeeuuuuwwwwwww!"

Posts in this series:

Death's head devotions
Skully bits
Skulls: the inside story
Skulls: the inside story, part 2
Skulls: the inside story, part 3
Voldemort
Voldemort, part 2
A skull of one's own
Goth
More living color

The dancing skeleton

I will get off this "skulls" thing I've been on: really, I will. But there will be just a few more posts -- October, with Hallowe'en and the Day of the Dead at the end of it, is just too good an opportunity to pass up.

One of my correspondents pointed me to an intriguing little "dancing" or "climbing" bone skeleton bead that's available from Fire Mountain Gems. It's a bit better carved than some of the bone skulls they sell, and I think it's rather cute.



I actually found a somewhat similar (but smaller) metal version, which I've used on the "plain and simple" version of a rosary in red glass in my collection.



Finally, there's another delightful little "Memento Mori" carving in the form of this "dancing skeleton." It's listed as possibly from Berlin, attributed to Joachim Hennen in the middle of the 17th century, and is now with the other "Voldemort" memento-mori's in the Schnütgen Museum in Köln (Cologne).



It's quite graceful (for a skeleton) even if the whole idea of "skeleton as dress accessory" is a bit morbid!

I should add, by the way, since this is as good a place to mention it as any, that there's also a delightful little ivory carving of a child in the same collection:



It's labeled as a "Lorettokindl," that is (I think), a depiction of the Christ Child from a group representing Our Lady of Loretto. I think it's darling. The similarity in poses is intriguing.

Posts in this series:

Death's head devotions
Skully bits
Skulls: the inside story
Skulls: the inside story, part 2
Skulls: the inside story, part 3
Voldemort
Voldemort, part 2
A skull of one's own
Goth
More living color

Voldemort II

As I mentioned a week or so ago, some of the small ivory sculptures I've been running across remind me of the character Voldemort in the Harry Potter books -- whose name, incidentally, contains the Latin root "mort" (death).



Usually these little ivory sculptures -- called "Memento Moris" -- have a living person's face on one side and a grinning skull on the other. Most of the ones I've seen have some arrangement for stringing as pendants -- either an attached ring at the top or a vertical hole bored through them.

(Here's a closeup of the skull side of the example above.)



I don't have a lot of data on how these were actually used or worn -- they are almost always described as components of a rosary or paternoster, but I haven't seen any pictorial or documentary evidence of them being used that way. (Rosaries like the one in my first post are usually reconstructions.) I would be unsurprised to see them on, for instance, a watch chain or somewhere else that a small hanging decorative object would be used. These remind me strongly of the Japanese netsuke, similar little sculptures that have become a "hot" collectible art form.

Like any other expensive little accessory, these were probably worn as much to show off one's wealth and good taste as for any other reason. However they do have a serious spiritual purpose: as their name indicates, these are reminders that death comes to everyone ("memento mori" = "remember death") and that since it may be unexpected and sudden, being prepared for it spiritually is a good thing.

(Note that the left-hand one of the three below does not actually have a skull -- it has a man's face on one side and a woman's on the other. This makes me wonder whether some of these faces may be actual portraits of the owners rather than generic faces.)

I also suspect that, in the days before today's mass media, these gruesome little pieces catered to the same macabre taste as the popular "dance of death" murals -- the most popular one was in Paris -- and paintings and engravings showing a skeletal Death taking the hand of bishops, aristocrats, nuns, and ordinary people. Perhaps it's the same taste that leads modern people to watch vampire movies :)

(I've noticed worms and other creepy-crawlies on the "skull" side of several of these sculptures. This especially gruesome example has them on the "face" side as well. Eeeeeeeuuuuuuwwwwww!)

Posts in this series:

Death's head devotions
Skully bits
Skulls: the inside story
Skulls: the inside story, part 2
Skulls: the inside story, part 3
Voldemort
Voldemort, part 2
A skull of one's own
Goth
More living color

Voldemort

I admit it: I'm a Harry Potter fan. You'd think this would have nothing to do with medieval rosaries, wouldn't you?

However, while again cruising the Marburg Foto Archive, I ran across some horridly fascinating little ivory sculptures that immediately put me in mind of Voldemort.



I'd seen these two pieces before: they're featured in 500 Jahre Rosenkranz, the 1975 exhibition catalog from Köln (Cologne). This is a type of little sculpture called a "Memento Mori", which literally means "remember death." On one side is the face of a living person, and on the other, a skull -- frequently a grinning skull!

(For those who haven't read the Harry Potter books, the first appearance of the villain, Lord Voldemort, is as a disembodied face on the back of Professor Quirrell's head. This is not the only place where author J. K. Rowling is drawing on the vast store of traditional European story-motifs, some of them quite old indeed.)

Medieval skull imagery is not something I deliberately set out to investigate, but I'm intrigued by how I keep tripping over it anyway. In the same collection as the two sculptures above, I ran across an entire string of little Memento-moris that have been formed into a sort of rosary. These pieces are in Köln, but while most of the rosaries in Köln's famous collection are in the diocesan museum, these are from the Schnütgen museum across town.




To me this does not appear to be an actual rosary. The arrangement doesn't particularly make sense -- why is the extra cross between two beads, rather than at the end? Why are there two beads between some sculptures and only one between others? I strongly suspect that, like the filigree beads I mentioned earlier this week, this originated as a bunch of loose pieces that someone has made into a string.



The top bead in particular does not look to me as though it's done in the same artistic style as the others. It's also the only one of the five without a skull: it appears to have a man's face and a woman's back to back, presumably Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary. The other four ivories are much more worn down and seem to be much less meticulously carved. The carved cross at the bottom and the metal beads may or may not have had anything to do with the other pieces originally.

There are several more of these Memento-moris at the Schnütgen museum, and we'll take a closer look at them soon.

Posts in this series:

Death's head devotions
Skully bits
Skulls: the inside story
Skulls: the inside story, part 2
Skulls: the inside story, part 3
Voldemort
Voldemort, part 2
A skull of one's own
Goth
More living color

Elfenbein

More treasures from the Marburg Foto Archive, though the photos unfortunately are not the absolute best they could be.

I ran across these while looking for something else, and it occurred to me that this is a good example of how the carved scenes inside the "skulls" rosary we've been looking at might look if they were removed from the skulls.

However these four medallions are ivory, rather than wood. They were originally painted in bright colors, as were most medieval ivories. The plain white appearance of so many ivories today comes from natural wear and from over-cleaning in the 19th century, due to that century's preference for "pure" sculptural forms untainted by color.

While not a lot of German is needed to navigate the Marburg archive, there are certain terms that are useful in reading the museum labels, including the names for various materials, such as "Holz" = wood, "Buchsbaum" = boxwood, "Bergkristall" = rock crystal, and the current "Elfenbein." The word "Bein" means "bone, and for a long while, every time I saw "Elfenbein" it irresistably suggested "elf bones." Actually it's elephant bone, that is, ivory.

These medallions do look as though they come from a set, similar to those in the skulls. The first two are scenes of St. George and St. Catherine of Alexandria. St. George has his spear, his dragon (underfoot), his horse, and at left, the princess he's rescuing. St. Catherine is identifiable because she's holding in one arm a pie-shaped segment of a wheel (you can easily see the three spokes and segment of rim), a symbol of her martyrdom.



The other two medallions in the set are incidents from the life of Christ: the Crucifixion at left, and at right the appearance of the Risen Christ to the women at the tomb.