Details, details....

Sometimes we're lucky, and someone has published books with BIG pictures of paternoster beads -- like the book with the St. Anthony pictures I was talking about awhile back. But when we're not so lucky, about the only way we can really study depictions of beads in detail is to travel to where the original paintings are and take some closeup photos ourselves. (Then again.... maybe that's a GOOD thing? {grin})

Anyway, since I had the opportunity, I've extracted and enlarged some of the photos I took recently that show details of beads. These are especially for my friends who do reproduction metalwork, some of whom I know (hope?) are contemplating making some of the types of beads and rosary parts that are not to be found on today's market. (Hint, hint!)

I've had an especially hard time finding on the modern market anything like the large, pierced, silver or gold beads, the originals of which were probably pomanders, filled with some fragrance-producing substance. Judging by how common it is to see one of these rosaries with one very large metal bead, these must have been very popular historically. Unfortunately for us, most of them were probably melted down for their precious-metal content when they went out of fashion. Surviving large beads are more likely to have been carved of boxwood or ivory, which don't melt.

But most of what's on the market right now in the way of pierced metal beads is either (1) too small to stand out as gauds on a string of 10mm to 14mm beads, or (2) of some Victorian or Art-Nouveau design that just doesn't look right.

Once in awhile, I'll find some large pierced-metal balls -- especially around Christmas -- but the only difference is that instead of being too small and of the wrong design, those tend to be too big and of the wrong design. They seem to start at about 3 inches in diameter and go up from there. The pomanders I see in paintings seem to be between about an inch and two inches in diameter. (And while I'm at it, I'd wish for reproduction pomanders that were plated base metal rather than solid silver, so they would be somewhat affordable.)

So without further ado, here are some nice details.

This one is from a painting I didn't get a good photo of overall, because the lighting kept creating spots of glare where it reflected off the varnish. (My detail photo isn't completely sharp, either.) Her identity is unknown and so is the name of the artist, but this was clearly half of a pair of marriage portraits. Note that her beads are black, possibly jet.

(As always, click on these photos to enlarge them.)



I've mentioned this one earlier, but here it is enlarged as far as I can:



The by-now-very-familiar-to-me artist Bartholomäus Bruyn the Elder painted another pair of these marriage portraits in 1528, this time of a Mr. and Mrs. Pilgrum -- Gerhard Pilgrum and his wife Anna Strauss Pilgrum. (They can easily be identified because their coats of arms are part of the picture.)

I am somewhat embarrassed by this photo. The online photos of these portraits that I was able to find are all extremely dark or very "off" on the colors. I took this in daylight, so the colors are much better. Unfortunately, this pair of portraits is displayed inside a glass case -- which reflects -- and directly facing a large wall of windows, which provides a lot of light to be reflected. I've managed to fade the impression a bit, but you can clearly see a reflection of me taking the photo -- especially since I happened to be wearing a nice, bright white shirt that day. {blush}



I was almost equally embarrassed to suddenly realize while I was there that Bartholomäus Bruyn actually lived and worked in Cologne -- I've seen a number of other "rosary portraits" that he painted, but I hadn't noticed where exactly they were from, since I found them on the Marburg Foto Index, which has things from all over Germany and beyond.

In this case, we get a bonus: not just one, but both members of the pair are holding beads. Here is a closeup of Gerhard's rosary:



And Anna's:



The closeup photos were actually easier to take, because I was able to move in close and block the light from the window behind me.

And finally, another rosary of red coral beads with a gold pomander. Sorry about the blur on this one too. (I've definitely decided after this trip, I hate my camera. I need a different one.)



This is from a portrait thought to be that of Maria Pastoir. Whoever the subject was, she was painted at age 45 in 1538. (Oh, and this photo isn't mine. It's good. ;)



Anyone studying German women's headdresses is going to want to collect all of Bruyn's portraits, because they have very good views of the folded and draped linen constructions popular on respectable heads at the time.

Pictures from Köln:

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

A Joos van Cleve altarpiece

Another of the paintings I saw while in Cologne was this scene showing the Death of the Virgin by Joos van Cleve the Elder, painted in 1515 for a prominent Cologne family's estate chapel.



This was one of the Wallraf-Richartz Museum's "Pictures of the Week" in February 2007, so there is a fairly extensive article on it online here. To summarize briefly: Joos van der Beke, better known as Joos van Cleve the Elder, painted in Antwerp from 1511-1540. The Hacquenay family of Cologne, for whom this was painted, may have originally come from the Netherlands as well. Side wings of the altarpiece show members of the family.

The painting is after a "template" for such scenes developed by Hugo van der Goes. The apostles surround Mary's deathbed. In the center, Saint Peter in Mass vestments leads the rites for the dying, and on the far right margin, Saint Thomas enters the room (according to the curator I was talking with, we know it's Thomas because he's the apostle who's always late for things....). The apostles are not carrying their usual "attributes" (knife, spear, shell, etc.) so otherwise it's hard to tell who's who.

I'm particularly curious about who this fellow is to Peter's right, carrying the holy water bucket, because he's wearing a large rosary around his neck.*



There's another set of beads casually lying on a small bench by Peter's feet, together with an object rather like a gravy boat, which I think contains a supply of incense. Both rosaries are colored like wood, though the beads don't show much detail. Both are rather loosely strung and both seem to have brown-colored cords, suggesting linen or hemp. But the one draped across the bench has a non-matching green tassel, which from the highlights painted into it seems intended to represent silk.



The beads around the bucket-carrying apostle's neck, on the other hand, have a pendant cross, and it's nice to get such a detailed look at a type of cross that may have been used on rosaries. It's more or less the same color as the beads, and since it's painted at an angle, we can also see that the four arms of the cross are all more or less cone-shaped with their points toward the center. It's suspended from the cord by a ring that looks as if it's rigidly fixed, perhaps made in one piece with the cross. The cross could be wood, but the ring suggests it might also be cast metal. (I'm sure I've seen something like this for sale, but at the moment I can't remember where.)

An interesting detail is that the cross is threaded onto the string in the middle of a decade, where you wouldn't necessarily expect to see it. But I've seen a number of rosaries more or less from this era that also carry various medals or charms in the middle of decades. This placement of the cross, if authentic, suggests it is not "counted" as part of the rosary and that no particular prayers are said as you come to its place on the string. This is in contrast to later rosaries, where the Credo is recited while holding the cross. On the other set of beads, however, the tassel comes between two decades and probably marks the starting point for prayers.

I always count the beads in paintings (as you may have noticed if you read this blog regularly) and the results are often interesting. A lot of the bucket-carrying apostle's beads are hidden, but those that are showing seem to be in plausible groups of ten. The beads on the bench definitely look like groups of ten too: we can see two full decades, six beads from the next decade and four beads from another. The loop we can see hanging down on the back side of the bench has two small beads on one side, one on the other, and a large marker bead in the center. Since what's showing on the front is two almost equal groups of beads, this suggests that the loop hanging down the back is probably more or less symmetrical too, making the total four decades.

*Score one for those who point out that historically, people sometimes did wear rosaries around their necks, despite what your Catholic grandmother always told you.

Pictures from Köln:

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

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

Anthony the ordinary

Previous Saint Anthony posts:

Tickling Saint Anthony
More beads for Saint Anthony

Two more Saint Anthonys with paternoster beads today: one from Spain, one from the Netherlands, both from the third quarter of the 15th century.

Nuño Gonsalves painted the St. Vincent Altarpiece in 1467-69 for Lisbon Cathedral (it's now in the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga). The deacon Saint Vincent of Zaragoza is one of the patrons of Lisbon. This is a huge, six-paneled piece crammed with faces. The ones in the front rows seem to be saints, Portuguese royalty, and other famous figures, and behind them are the faces of about thirty spectators. (By the way, out of about 60 figures I count exactly two women in this picture: Saint Margaret kneeling in the front of the left central panel, who has a small dragon apparently dancing on her head and is also holding paternoster beads, and another woman behind her, who is thought to be the Infanta Isabel, daughter of King João I.) Saint Vincent appears dressed in red and gold deacons' robes in both of the central panels. Six panels is a bit unusual for an altarpiece, but if there was ever a seventh panel in the middle showing the Virgin and Child or some other scene, it's been lost or hasn't been identified yet.



Many of the figures (especially among the spectators) are thought to be portraits of actual 15th-century people from Lisbon, including the artist and Prince Henry the Navigator, though there's some uncertainty as to exactly who is who. There is more information here.

At any rate, Saint Anthony appears in a curious crouched position in the front of the second panel from the left, called the "Fishermen" panel. He shows next to no distinguishing marks, so my identification of him as Saint Anthony is based on his brown robe (which is apparently a signal meaning "hermit") and on what the book I got it from says. The photo in the book is rather small, so this is the best reproduction I can get, and it's not very good.



About all we can really see in this fuzzy photo is that his beads, too, are wood-colored, and they seem to be rather loosely strung. I can't even be sure of their shape -- they could be disk-shaped, they could be round or oval.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The real star of this series, however, is Saint Anthony's beads in the Portinari altarpiece, painted by Hugo van der Goes (1440-1482), and now in the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.

In some ways these are the most interesting beads so far, because they are painted in a way that suggests these are real beads that might have been owned by a very ordinary person, painted (more or less) from life, rather than an abstract concept of beads (as the Ghent altarpiece beads seem to be). Here is Saint Anthony, on the left. The figure on the right is Saint Thomas the Apostle; that vertical pole he's holding is a spear, one of his attributes. Saint Anthony is nicely identified by his T-shaped staff and by the bell in his other hand.



Clothing historians often complain that they never get to see much of what ordinary people wore in history, since both the surviving garments and surviving documents such as wills and inventories focus mainly on the clothing of royalty, the Church, and the wealthy, and these are also about the only people who ever get their portraits painted. Well, here we get to see what I think are a very ordinary person's beads, and it's nice to get such a good look at them. (I love books with BIG photos!)



The beads themselves look very real. There are 28 beads that look like they are probably made of bone, shaped like fat rounded disks (rondelles), one or two fatter than the rest. There are seven transparent beads -- a very small one right above the little equal-armed cross, three smallish spheres, two large spheres, and one rondelle. The bead just below the cross might also be transparent and just doesn't look that way because it's against a dark background and shows no highlights or reflections -- or it might be black. Anyway it's another large sphere.

It's very interesting that these beads are so irregular in size and shape. Common sense suggests this could have been quite normal for the beads of a common, not too well-off person. They might have been homemade, or if they were bought, irregular beads would likely be cheaper. And if your purpose is to count prayers and not to show off (more expensive beads were often "conspicuous consumption" pieces) then a few irregularities don't matter.

The transparent beads I would guess to be glass, as the cheapest of the transparent materials available. (Amber and crystal were luxury materials.) Again they don't all match. If you compare the beads with the size of the saint's fingers, they are by modern standards quite large for rosary beads, the biggest nearly an inch across. I have a theory that the reason modern rosary beads are usually only about 1/4 that size is that modern people generally don't display their rosaries like jewelry, but stuff them into a pocket or purse.

What is probably not quite realistic is the bead count. Not counting the marker beads, I see groups of 5 (or 6), 10, 7, 5, and 5, which doesn't match any pattern of prayers I can think of.

Usually when I see bead numbers that don't make sense -- especially when the bead groups don't all have the same number -- I attribute it to artistic license, the artist painting to make a nice picture rather than feeling compelled to reproduce a real model exactly. These beads are otherwise so realistic looking, however, that I am now wondering whether that's a correct assumption, or whether there really were prayer beads like this, or whether perhaps the artist might be painting a real set of beads that has been damaged and imperfectly mended. I'll keep my eyes open now for more evidence on this question.

Or I can just add it to my list of questions for, "If I ever get to heaven, I am going to track down so-and-so and ask....."!

More beads for Saint Anthony

For reasons I haven't yet figured out, certain saints are more often pictured with paternoster beads than others in medieval painting and sculpture. Saint Jerome, for instance, if he's shown in his study will very often have a string of beads hanging somewhere in the background.

Saint Anthony Abbot is another saint often pictured with a paternoster. Probably one of the reasons is to signal his status as a prototype of all holy hermits, along with his friend Saint Paul of Thebes. Another major reason is that tradition says Saint Anthony counted his prayers using a pile of pebbles, throwing one away after each repetition of his prayer, which makes him a forefather of the rosary as well. His beads, however, are generally not shown as a pile of pebbles, but as an ordinary strung paternoster of whatever time period the painter decided was appropriate -- usually the painter's own century.

As I think I've mentioned, the temptation of Saint Anthony by demons is a popular scene, and in most of these scenes he is holding a string of beads, often rather more conspicuous than the small glimpse of beads we see in the Isenheim altarpiece. One of my favorite "Temptations" is this one, a detail from the Penitence of Saint Jerome triptych by Joachim Patinir, painted about 1515-24 and now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.



The Square Halo, a favorite book of mine about saints and their depiction in medieval paintings, notes that these demons appear to be rather quiet and polite as demons go -- tapping gently at the saint's book to get his attention, rather than pulling his hair or tweaking his nose. Enlarging this part of the painting reveals details of the beads and also some rather intriguing details of the book he's reading -- perhaps it's even identifiable, but in any case it has a very fine tooled leather cover.



The beads appear by their color to be wood, which makes sense if the saint is off in the wilderness somewhere. There are probably supposed to be five decades -- set off by marker beads somewhat larger than the others -- but the painter didn't quite count them precisely as there is one "decade" with only eight beads.

A rather more magnificent set of beads is held by Saint Anthony in the forefront of another painting, the Hermit Saints panel (labeled "Heremite Sancti") of the very famous Ghent altarpiece or Adoration of the Mystic Lamb by Jan and Hubert van Eyck, painted for Saint Bavo Cathedral around 1432. This is a huge painting, with many panels showing saints of various types all surrounding the central picture: there are groups representing virgins, martyrs, apostles, popes and clerics, soldier saints, hermits, pilgrims and so forth.



The holy hermits are in panel 13 (bottom row, just to the right of the central scene) and Saint Anthony and Saint Paul of Thebes are in the front row, as befits their role as prototypes. You can tell which is which by the fact that Saint Anthony has his staff -- L-shaped rather than T-shaped this time. There is supposed to be a blue Tau-cross on his robe, but I can't see it in this reproduction. Also, as is often the case when these two saints are shown together, Saint Anthony is on the left (heraldic "dexter," the position of honor), indicating he has precedence in rank.



Since the events in the painting are supposed to be taking place in Heaven, or at least in the Book of Revelations, Saint Anthony is not restricted to plain wooden beads, but has a long straight string of about 35 beads that are probably supposed to be rock crystal. It also has fancy pearl-embellished tassels on both ends; clearly in Heaven, wealth is infinite and saints can afford whatever they like!



The beads carried by Saint Paul of Thebes in the same painting are black, on a red string, and are probably supposed to represent jet. I can't think of any particular association between Saint Paul and jet, but these would be valuable beads, although not as valuable as Saint Anthony's. There are 21 beads visible, though the exact number is probably not significant. Of more interest, there seems to be a flat cross of some sort at the bottom of the loop of beads. This area of the painting is quite dark and it's difficult to see details of the cross in a reproduction. It appears to be a cross pattée with the arms narrow at the center and wide at the ends.



I have another couple of Saint Anthonys to show, but I'll save them for another post.

Tickling Saint Anthony

There's at least one more interesting set of beads I want to mention in the Isenheim Altarpiece, this time on one of the inside panels. Here's the altarpiece with the inner wings open:



This altarpiece was probably commissioned for a church or guild honoring Saint Anthony Abbot, traditionally a fourth-century Egyptian hermit, one of the "Desert Fathers" of the early church. (There's a lot more information about him here.) The two painted panels on the innermost wings of the altarpiece show, on the left, the visit of St. Anthony to his good buddy St. Paul of Thebes, another of the Desert Fathers, and on the right, St. Anthony's temptation by demons. Here's the left panel:



And the right one:



And, for completeness, a closer view of the statue of St. Anthony -- note the pig nestling under his robes on the right, and another held by his follower:



Saint Anthony is distinguished by a Tau (T)-shaped or sometimes L-shaped staff. This is actually an early version of the more familiar curly-headed bishop's crozier. The crutch-like shape may also relate to the fact that St. Anthony is almost always shown as a very old man.

The "Temptation of Saint Anthony" is one of those classic scenes artists seem to have really enjoyed painting, perhaps because it gave them carte blanche to exercise their imaginations and dream up some really interesting demons. The moral of this story is that being alone in the desert doesn't eliminate the possibility of sinning, it's just that it comes to visit you instead of you having to go look for it. Hieronymus Bosch painted the scene several times, with his usual weird creatures in the background (for instance here and here), though for some reason most of those directly tempting St. Anthony in this case appear to be human. Jan Wellens de Cock, Pieter Bruegel, Bernardino Parenzano, and Lucas van Leyden were other examples I could readily find, with the last-named having particulary interesting creatures on offer. But Grünewald's version in the Isenheim altarpiece has them all beat.

As you can see in Grünewald's Temptation panel, the demons are combinations of animal parts and nightmare, and there's a bit of confusion about exactly which parts belong to whom where they are all jumbled together. They are pulling the saint's hair, threatening to beat him with sticks and making terrifying faces (not that they can help that last part).



As you might expect, my attention went straight to the saint's right hand, which something with a bird beak is trying to bite. In that hand you can see he is holding his staff and also a string of beads:



As beads, there is nothing particularly remarkable about them; we can see just five plain round red beads. Being red, they are likely intended to be coral, which was probably not popular with fourth-century hermits but very popular with those who could afford them in 15th-century Alsace.

It's really the expression on Saint Anthony's face that I find the most intriguing thing in this picture. I am no art historian, so I don't have a good feel for how fifteenth-century painters depicted facial expressions; it's entirely possible that this particular expression means something I'm not aware of. But to me, it looks as though Saint Anthony is laughing, or perhaps giggling. I suppose this is as good a reaction as any when one is being tempted, especially when one has no intention whatever of giving in.

Or perhaps the demons have been given Supernatural Tickling Powers. Oh horrors.

Beads in the Isenheim altarpiece

Christmas vacation finally gave me a few days when I was actually home during the day on a week day, and fortunately, they were also days when it was neither too hot nor pouring rain... so I've finally been able to get down to the university library. I'm quite thankful that I live less than a mile from an excellent library on one of the University of California campuses, and they have a "Library Associates" membership that lets you take out ten books for two weeks at a time. I've had an Associates card there almost continuously since I finished graduate school there.

On this visit, while looking for a book that wasn't there on the shelf, I happened upon something else: Gothic and Renaissance Altarpieces by Caterina Limantani Virdis and Mari Pietrogiovanna. This is a true feast for the eyes, especially for us old, tired eyes over 40, since it features nice BIG detail pictures, four or five of them for each piece. (And by BIG I mean full-page photos nearly a foot square).

Needless to say, my eyes go straight to the beads :)

As I've come to expect, about half the paintings have rosary or paternoster beads in them somewhere -- held in someone's hand, lying casually on the step below a throne, or hanging from someone's belt. In many cases they are included in the details of the painting that are enlarged to full-page size, and often they are so meticulously painted that it's quite easy to count the beads, see what color thread they are on, and make a good guess about what material they're supposed to be. The paintings are also full of other fascinating little details -- close-up views of locks and keys, stirrups, book covers, candlesticks, fire screens, and a blue and white painted vase containing flowers. Ordinary books with just one photo of the whole painting simply don't show this kind of thing.

The book goes into detail on thirty selected altarpieces, ranging in date from about 1375 to somewhere in the early 1500s, and in location from the Low Countries to France, Germany, Italy and Spain. Some are single paintings, but several consist of elaborate cabinets that may have one set of paintings on the outside doors, which would be displayed on ordinary days, and then on feast days and special occasions the doors or wings would be opened, revealing more paintings on the inside of the wings and in the center.



The first piece I want to share from this book is a panel from the Isenheim Altarpiece, which was originally painted sometime before 1520 for a church in Alsace. The painting is usually attributed to Matthias Grünewald, who is supposed to have produced a large body of paintings mostly in the Rhineland and Alsace, but it's not at all clear who he was, or indeed whether the work of several painters with similar names has become confused.

As an altarpiece, this is unusual in having not just one set of wings, but two, one inside the other. Opening the outer doors reveals four panels showing first the Annunciation, then an intermediate panel with the Virgin Mary and celebrating angels, a Virgin and Child scene, and the Resurrection of Christ. When the inside wings are opened, two paintings from the life of St. Anthony flank an elaborately carved and gilded wooden sculpture of St. Augustine, St. Anthony enthroned and St. Jerome. Here is the altarpiece opened to show the four panels:



The Virgin and Child scene from a bit closer:



And finally, a detail of the beads:



This is only the second (I think) instance I've found where the Infant Jesus is playing with a string of paternoster beads that are not red coral. As I've mentioned in other posts here, quite a few paintings of the Virgin and Child show the infant playing with this very anachronistic accessory, probably because it gives the painter a chance to emphasize the Holy Child's humanity -- anyone who knows babies knows beads are the sort of thing they love to play with (and chew on). Red coral was often given to babies as a good-luck charm or teething toy, since it was thought to avert the "evil eye."

These beads look as though they might be amber, especially as they seem to be a little irregular in size. They are round, and about the same color as the Virgin Mary's hair or the gold clasp at her neckline. There appear to be about fifteen beads, plus one larger element that might be a much larger bead or some sort of medallion -- we can only see the edge of it, as it's falling down behind the Infant's little round stomach. He is holding two of the beads very delicately between his thumbs and index fingers, and both mother and child are smiling.

Amber may range anywhere from transparent to almost completely opaque, and it has always been a favorite material for rosary beads, despite the fact that it is softer and more easily damaged than the harder types of semiprecious stone. As a luxurious and expensive material, it could also provide an opportunity to show off one's wealth and good taste as well as piety. Amber also has a sweet, resinous scent when warmed, and when rubbed briskly with a cloth will attract little bits of lightweight paper or chaff -- a very mysterious phenomenon in the Renaissance, which we now know is due to static electricity.

More photos: REALonline

Over on the Paternosters mailing list, fellow historical-rosary enthusiast Marion McNealy recently alerted me to a source for more online photos.

She writes, "I've been browsing around in REALonline, the Austrian equivalent to Bildindex.de, only it's much better indexed and searchable. It mainly has artworks, most in color, but it does have a few objects. I *love* this site!"

Marion has also very helpfully written a user's guide to REALonline for those of us whose German isn't as good as hers. :) Thanks, Marion!

The Austrian version of the German language is a bit different, so the best keyword in searching for rosaries turns out to be "Betschnur" (literally "prayer-string") rather than "rosenkranz" ("rose-wreath") which is the most useful word on the Bildindex site in Germany.

A search on "Betschnur" turns up a few actual rosaries, indexed under "Materielle Objekte" in the catalog. There are many other references to rosaries in paintings, sculptures and woodcuts, which I've only just begun to explore.

Here, for instance, is a color photo of the small rosary I used as the inspiration for my German horn beads. I knew the description said it was "blue-green" but I certainly didn't expect this color!

Balthasar's acorns

I like to tell this story because it proves I can be as wrong as anyone.

In looking for pictures of how people actually wore their rosaries, I was fascinated by this picture (from the Marburg photo archive). This nice young man is Balthasar Eicheister in 1528, and he has just become betrothed, as you can tell because he's holding a carnation in his hand. He is lucky enough to have his portrait (and presumably his lady's as well) painted for the occasion by Bartholomeus Bruyn the Elder, a painter from the region of Cologne, Germany, who painted lots of portraits of people with rosaries.



Aha, I said to myself: not only is this an interesting picture of someone wearing a rosary around his wrist, it's a nice example of a rosary made from tubular beads, probably wooden ones by their color. A few of them seem to be a little larger and lighter in color, so they might be a different material. And since I had on hand some beads of the right shapes, and an especially nice carved bone bead that I wanted to use for something, I made this:



I've found, by the way, that I can wear this rosary wrapped around my wrist, Balthasar-fashion, but that it's too slippery to stay that way by itself. If I want it to hang in several loose loops rather than one long dangly loop and the rest snug, I have to fasten the strands together with a brooch -- and it still gets in my way rather.

As I've mentioned before, the Marburg photo archive is not very well indexed, so it was only when I searched out all of Bartholomeus Bruyn's portraits that I noticed this:

It's a closeup of the same painting, and it shows the beads much more clearly. And -- surprise! -- they aren't cylinders at all, they are carved in the form of acorns!



I have yet to find out the symbolism of using beads shaped like acorns in a rosary. Perhaps it's just a fashionable bead shape -- there's a girdle of acorns carved in rock crystal from the tomb in Lauingen, Bavaria, of the Countess Palatine Dorothea Sabina (known to costumers because the pattern for her gown is in Janet Arnold's Patterns of Fashion c.1560-1620).



The description of this girdle in Princely Magnificence: Court Jewels of the Renaissance, 1500-1630 (Debrett's Peerage Ltd., 1980) notes that there were "Acorns of silver on what is probably a rosary of the early 16th century" in a 1904 exhibition of historical jewelry in Strassburg.

Last but not least, I'm kicking myself for another missed opportunity on the German eBay: a rosary of wooden acorns came up for auction a couple of years ago, and not only did I not bid on it, I didn't save the photo, either :(

So what is it with acorns?

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.