P.S. on cylinders

While looking for something completely unrelated, I ran across another version of the illustration of Elector Friederich the Wise of Saxony (1463-1525) that's shown in Praying on (Almost) All Cylinders.

This one's a drawing, rather than a painting, and the details may be a bit clearer. It's by the same artist as the painting -- Lucas Cranach (the Elder). The other guy in the picture (on the right) is Friederich's brother Johann.

More manly men

Rosaries in the Renaissance were certainly not just for women. There were many Manly Men who had their portraits painted clutching a rosary or paternoster -- preferably with Really Big Beads to demonstrate how wealthy and successful they were.

Besides the paintings of Manly Men with Rosaries that I've mentioned before in It's a Guy Thing, there are also quite a few woodcuts on the same subject in the Marburg Photo Archive.

As I said for the previous bunch, most of these guys don't look as if they're enjoying sitting for their pictures either. Perhaps the serious-to-sour expression is the convention of the time (late 1500s-early 1600s) for men who are trying to look adult, responsible and respectable :)

Here are a couple of the Really Big Beads guys. On the left is Andreas Musculus in 1573, by Franz Friedrich. On the right, Prince George III of Anhalt in 1553, by Lucas Cranach the Younger.



More of the same: on the left, Kaspar Peucer, artist and date uncertain; on the right, another unknown artist picturing Johannes Briesmann, sometime after 1549.



Somewhat smaller rosaries: here's Johann Nieberl in 1609, by Lucas Kilian:



And three from the same family: Hilpolt, Lorentz, and Anton Kress von Kressenstein. These all appear to be memorial portraits from the early 1600s. The third one (Anton) is attributed to Hans Troschel; the others aren't certain -- but they certainly look to me as though they all could have been done by the same artist.



Although some of the beads inevitably are behind a sleeve or hidden in the hand in these pictures, you can actually tell quite a bit about the rosaries. For instance, Anton Kress (to start with the last) is wearing his rosary around his right wrist, the second or third person I've seen doing this (one of his brothers is doing the same). There seem to be more than 10 but fewer than 20 beads, with smaller beads between each one (or at least that's how I interpret this). In front of the cushion below his hand you can faintly see the outline of an equal-armed cross that looks to be about an inch and a half high (comparing it with his fingers for scale).

Mr. Nieberl seems to have a very similar set of beads, and here you can see the cross a lot more clearly; but if there are small beads between the bigger ones, they're not as clear.

Andreas Musculus (what a name!) seems to be holding a classic "tenner" -- it looks like a string of ten beads, with an eleventh larger bead and what looks like a small tassel on the far right. We can see six beads next to that one; if he's concealing three beads in his hand, there's one more bead below his little finger, followed by something that isn't clear. We could be seeing a ring attached to the strand, followed by a heart-shaped thing with a cross on it (which looks rather like a sword).

Woodcuts are, of course, not photos, so we can never be sure the artist is showing a real object in exact detail. But these are interesting hints, at least.

It's a Guy Thing

Rosaries in the Renaissance were certainly not just for women. There were many Manly Men who had their portraits painted clutching a rosary or paternoster -- preferably with Really Big Beads to demonstrate how wealthy and successful they were.

As with the portraits of women with large coral rosaries, some of these portraits of men are clearly the "other half" of a pair of marriage portraits, while other portraits stand alone.

Besides rosaries, other favorite things for men to hold in formal portraits are a pair of gloves, a book, a skull(!) or a rolled-up piece of paper (though we usually can't see what's on it). Women tend to hold gloves as well, or handkerchiefs, but more often just have their hands neatly folded. (These are ladies of leisure, one presumes.)

Here are a few of the better portraits of Men With Rosaries that I've found, followed by links to several more.

Below is a portrait by Albrecht Dürer of his father (left), (1490), and a portrait of Lodewijk [Ludwig] van Gruuthuse, by the Master of the Princes' Portraits (right):



Below left, an unknown man with a rosary, by Bartholomäus Bruyn the Elder (mid-1500s); right, A portrait of a man from the Pilgrum family, by Bartholomäus Bruyn the Elder (1528):



Speaking of BIG beads, here's a portrait of a man from the Von Rhein family and a closeup view of his beads:



A portrait of a man from the Chemnitz family, by Ludget tom Ring the Younger (1569), and an anonymous portrait by the Master of the Bartholomew Altar (1492):



This one's rather entertaining: Stefan Praun poses for his portrait (painter & date unknown) dressed up in pilgrim's clothing. There's a large rosary hanging from the hand that's holding his pilgrim's staff.



Some people just don't like having their portraits painted. Perhaps the gentleman below thinks his beads are too small? (This is actually Duke Sigismund of Austria, Count of Tyrol, painted by the Master of the Mornauer Portraits, around 1470.)

See the links below for more portraits:

Otto von Langenfeldt, by a painter signing himself "M S V" (1510)

Man with Rosary, by Ulrich Apt the Elder, Augsburg (1st half of 1500s)

Portrait of a Man, by Bartholomäus Bruyn the Elder (1533)

A portrait by the Master of St. Sebastian of Mainz

Another portrait
by Bartholomäus Bruyn the Elder (circa 1528)

For more on men with big rosaries, see the entries for Counting to ten and Praying on all cylinders. For big rosaries held by women, see Big, Red, and German and Big Berthas.

Praying on (almost) all cylinders

In my recent Lozenges, flowers & sabots posting, I mentioned a rather dark portrait of René d'Anjou with a rosary that seemed to be made of cylindrical beads. I've now found another one -- this one a bit more visible, from a 1510 portrait (also rather dark) by Lucas Cranach (the Elder) of Elector Friederich the Wise of Saxony (1463-1525). (Interestingly, Friedrich is mostly remembered for protecting Martin Luther from the Inquisition!)

Here are the picture and a closeup of the beads, both of which I've lightened up in Photoshop so you can see them better. Click on the photo to see the closeup.



The original photo online is at Bildindex.de, the Marburg Photo Archive, which has thousands of images of art from Germany.

About 26 beads are clearly visible (not counting the ones hidden in his hands), plus a drum-shaped ending bead and tassel. The color suggests they might be wood, and at least one spherical marker bead can clearly be seen in front. We can't tell from the way they are lying whether this is a straight string or a loop -- I can only see one thread going into the top of the tassel-bead, but that could be due to the shadows. If the painter was depicting these accurately (which he may or may not have been) this might be a string of 30 (three decades) or 33 beads -- not that I can necessarily say offhand what particular devotions may go with either of those numbers.

Chatsworth paternoster

I finally have a GOOD photo of the "Chatsworth paternoster," otherwise known as Henry VIII's rosary.

It's actually a "tenner", a string of ten large beads. There is a ring at one end, a cross, the usual ten beads, and then an eleventh, larger bead which is a "prayer nut," carved on the outside and opening to show more carving on the inside.

Actually, the whole thing is an amazing, minutely and intricately carved work in boxwood -- a wood often used for such virtuoso exhibitions of carving, since it's very hard and close-grained. To quote the catalog:

"The Cross is carved with the Crucifixion and the Four Evangelists on one side and the four Latin fathers on the other. The Ave beads are each divided into five roundels, and carved with figures of ten of the the Apostles, with the Sentences of the Creed, the Prophets and Sibyls with appropriate texts, and scenes from the Old and New Testaments. The Pater bead [5.4cm diameter] has three rows of eight roundels with further scenes, including the royal arms of England and the letters 'he 8' (for King Henry VIII) and 'k.a.' (for Queen Catherine of Aragon), and the two remaining Apostles; it is hinged and has another two scenes inside of the Mass of Saint Gregory and the Virgin and Child Adored by Angels."

The entire string is 58cm (almost 23 inches) long. It was bought by the sixth Duke of Devonshire (1790-1858) for 200 pounds, from Rundell and Bridge (the Court jewelers), after being in the keeping of the Jesuits at Paris for many years, and then in a private collection.

I've been looking for a good photo of this for quite a while, since the only ones I've been able to find are small black and white versions, and usually they're from books printed before about 1990, when there seems to have been something of a revolution in photography and color printing that allows more recent books to have bigger, sharper and clearer close-up photos than ever before. (People with over-40 eyes appreciate this a lot.)

This photo is in The Devonshire Inheritance: Five Centuries of Collecting at Chatsworth [Ed. Frances Kianka; Art Services International, 2003, ISBN 0-88397-138-0], printed to accompany a traveling exhibit that's been making the rounds in the U.S. (I think it's currently in Palm Beach, Florida). There's a half-page photo of the whole thing, and a closeup of two of the beads.

That's the good news [grin].

The bad news? The fact that this is, indeed, part of that traveling exhibit means that I did -- as I thought -- miss seeing the thing in person by one (1) day. I was visiting my parents in Boston early in November, and the day that I arrived was the day after the last day of the exhibit at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, not that far away.

Oh, well :)

Counting to ten

One of the common forms of medieval rosary or paternoster is a string of just one decade — ten beads. The Germans call this a "Zehner" which literally means "Tenner." The beads are usually rather large, giving the owner an opportunity to show off a few extra large, ostentatiously expensive beads, such as red coral or elaborately carved boxwood.

"Portrait of a Man with a Rosary," attributed to Jan Cornelisz. Vermeyen (Netherlands, 1545, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY) (This man looks like he really doesn't want to have his portrait painted!)

By and large, the tenner seems to be a "guy thing." So far I haven't seen any depictions of one being held by a woman, although both men and women are seen holding longer multi-decade strings and closed-loop rosaries.

A number of style variations are possible. Just a quick survey of the examples I can find easily gives these:

· A string of ten beads (sometimes an eleventh, larger bead) with a finger ring at one end and a cross or other pendant at the other. Several examples survive, such as this one:

Simple Zehner or Tenner from the Diocesan Museum in Köln (Cologne, Germany)

· An open string of ten beads,loosely strung with tassels at both ends, sometimes with an eleventh, larger bead. Often worn looped over a belt. Something similar — not strictly a tenner, since it has 16 beads and an additional contrasting bead in the center — is in the background of the painting The Magdalen Reading

· The Chatsworth paternoster. A ring at the top, followed by a carved wooden cross, then eleven large carved wooden beads, and at the bottom a "prayer nut" bead that opens to show carvings inside. Given to Henry VIII of England by Cardinal Wolsey (16th century).

More unusual examples include:

· The "seven skulls." A ring at the top, ten (probably) heavily carved beads with gilded silver beads in between, and a silver pendant. 15th or 16th century, German. This particular string has seven remaining beads, but it is likely there originally were ten.

Seven boxwood skulls (prob. orig. 10), with silver gilt, niello and enamel spacers, ring, & crescent. Inside each skull are 2 carved scenes against feather background. 39cm, skulls ca. 2cm. closed. (Baltimore Museum of Art).

· Twelve carved apricot kernels, with silver beads in between, and a tassel at the bottom. I have my doubts about this one, since a magnified view of the photo shows that the end without a tassel is a rather frayed-looking knot. I strongly suspect that this is merely twelve beads that were once part of a longer string. Since they are so elaborate (and expensive!), they would probably have been salvaged even if they were all that remained of the original rosary.