Different Image of Mary

[Roguish]

@CRM_Brother, thanks for posting a substantial analysis of this piece. On some points though, I don’t follow you and/or don’t quite agree with you – possibly because I’m not at all an expert in Carolingian art, or in art in general. So please take my questions below in good stride: I ask because I’m truly interested, not just for the sake of arguing.

The finials at the top are of two separate motifs. The two on the corners are the recognizable Lamb of God

I don’t see how the figures in the top corners are the Lamb of God. (Download the pic and zoom in if you haven’t already.) They look nothing like sheep, let alone lambs. They look like guard dogs. Furthermore, one would expect any Lamb(s) of God in a Christian work of art to take a prominent place, not be added as inconspicuous minor decorations.

Between them, however seems to be a somewhat rarer depiction of the Tree of Life.

There’s three of them, so I don’t know what to make of this. The “Trees” of Life? Besides, they don’t look much like trees. If you hadn’t made the point that that’s what they are, I don’t think I would’ve even thought of trees.

the artist was a student of a graduate of the Italian or Byzantine schools, for if it was the graduate himself, Mary’s dress would be formed differently.

How do you mean? Graduates teach their students to sculpt Mary’s dress differently from how they (the graduates) themselves think is best? I don’t follow you.

a wooden spoon and a hand spindle representing her position of matriarch within Christ’s household

The spoon and spindle signify Mary’s status as “Matriarch”? How so? It seems you’re saying they are to be interpreted as plain household instruments, indicating that Mary was a cook and a seamstress. That seems rather demeaning, and incongruent with her otherwise exalted stature.

a not uncommon theme in Early Middle Age depictions of Mary.

The spindle is common, yes. The spoon I don’t recall ever seeing before. You say it’s common. Can you link or name a single other depiction of Mary that has her holding a spoon?

Thanks. (I repeat: I ask in order to understand, not to bicker needlessly.)

P.S. The Met webpage linked earlier comments rather strangely that “The curious juxtaposition of the figure of Mary as the Virgin Mother of Christ and as the Church is unique to this ivory plaque” – a rather vacuous comment because there is no juxtaposition of two Mary’s in this piece. There is one Mary depicted, without Baby Jesus as far as I can see, and the impression she makes is combative, not motherly. I get the feeling that the “experts” at the Met didn’t know what to make of this piece either.

 

[Latetotheparty]

Wasn’t Jesus meant to not be a dreamboat? There wasn’t anything aesthetically pleasing to draw people to him? Just that he was slightly taller than most.

I , for one, can’t stand effeminate looking Jesus with the long face and long hair looking white and skinny. Much prefer a young Jewish burly carpenter.

I do imagine him with the kindest brown eyes (a bit twinkly) that also look incredibly soulful and a face that lits up when he laughs. That’s just my own projection.

 

[Roguish]

“Sup dude…”

 

[Latetotheparty]

Are we back to Jimmy again?

Yeah, we’re almost there with him.

 

[Latetotheparty]

Although, dare I say that he was slightly too good-looking?

 

[ComplineSanFran]

Wasn’t Jesus meant to not be a dreamboat? There wasn’t anything aesthetically pleasing to draw people to him? Just that he was slightly taller than most.

I , for one, can’t stand effeminate looking Jesus with the long face and long hair looking white and skinny. Much prefer a young Jewish burly carpenter.

I do imagine him with the most kindest brown eyes (a bit twinkly) and a face that lits up when he laughs. That’s just my own projection.

I believe that some of the early Church writings (not first hand accounts by any means) have Jesus as short, unattractive, bent over, and unappealing. I would have to go back to some of my notes to find specific sources, but that is what I remember of the readings. But again, this topic is about Mary, not bent over Jesus.

 

[mrsdizzyd]

How do you know??? That’s nothing more than your opinion! This article says that the tradition of shoulder length hair depicted on Jesus, such as on the Shroud of Turin, does not contradict the Bible.

Contradict? No. But, the earliest depictions of him that we have have him with short hair. Long hair was really not the norm.

If he had long hair you’d almost expect someone to point out how unusual it was.

 

[Latetotheparty]

Poor Jesus. Let’s not go that far…

Found it !

"had no special beauty or form to make us notice him; there was nothing in his appearance to make us desire him. " Isaiah 53:2.

 

[Loud-living-dogma]

In addition, I find the photo unpleasant not because Jesus is depicted as a a Middle Eastern Jewish man (because he was) I find the photo unpleasant because he’s got a startled-goofy look on his face what’s that all about?

Yes, this picture would be better with a quote bubble reading “Huh?”.

 

[CRM_Brother]

I don’t see how the figures in the top corners are the Lamb of God. (Download the pic and zoom in if you haven’t already.) They look nothing like sheep, let alone lambs. They look like guard dogs. Furthermore, one would expect any Lamb(s) of God in a Christian work of art to take a prominent place, not be added as inconspicuous minor decorations.

I understand your confusion. When I began my studies in the development of liturgical art and architecture, I also thought the early Lamb of Gods looked like shaggy white dogs. It turns out that Christians until the development of realism the High Middle Ages depicted any image of Christ, whether as an infant (seeing an image of the infant Christ with six-pack abs is somewhat disturbing) or as a Lamb of God as much more masculine. In the instance of repeated 'Lamb of God’s, such as this, it sheds the individual personification of Christ and takes on a representational meaning of sacrifice and offering of oneself for oBelow is an example of the more masculine Lamb of God from the early Middle Ages.
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You can see in the carving in the right corner that there are the similar pointed face and very slim forelegs. Dogs in this era are quite rare to find in carving unless it is a hunting scene or depicting evil in the form of a hound.

There’s three of them, so I don’t know what to make of this. The “Trees” of Life? Besides, they don’t look much like trees. If you hadn’t made the point that that’s what they are, I don’t think I would’ve even thought of trees.

"Tree of Life’ can be somewhat of a catch-all term used for decorative elements in liturgical art (outside of a landscape depiction of an event) of either trees, bushes, or vines. Generally they represent creation and new life. In conjunction with a scene depicting heaven, they can also be interpreted as everlasting life and paradise. A sample of a ‘Tree of Life’ motif from the Carolingian period can be found below. The one on the wood cut above seems to be a little more simplistic.
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[CRM_Brother]

How do you mean? Graduates teach their students to sculpt Mary’s dress differently from how they (the graduates) themselves think is best? I don’t follow you.

When we speak of ‘graduates’ of Italian or Byzantine trade schools we speak of those artists who have achieved a level of mastery as certified by the master who owned the workshop. Journeymen were craftsmen who were either students working in a workshop to gain their mastery, or they roamed from one workshop to another learning different techniques and selling their services. This is the latter type of student I believe the artist of this work to be.

The Italian and Byzantine workshop schools of this period were focused on the uniformity of stylistic elements so that any observer could immediately recognize the figure. The master would usually only bestow mastery on their pupil journeyman who could imitate their style and surpass their talent. The Byzantine did this to an extreme extent in which almost all images needed to be exact replicas of that which came before, as in Eastern iconography. The willingness to deviate so far from the widely identifiable clothing of Mary (flowing dress and long veil seen below in the Nativity scene [top] and Assumption [bottom]) seems to denote that the artist was not a graduate but one of the Journeymen who roamed and picked up stylistic elements while keeping an independent form of expression. The Carolingian court especially liked to finance these types of artists because they were gradually developing an national identity separate from the Byzantine Empire and ancient Rome.

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[CRM_Brother]

The spoon and spindle signify Mary’s status as “Matriarch”? How so? It seems you’re saying they are to be interpreted as plain household instruments, indicating that Mary was a cook and a seamstress. That seems rather demeaning, and incongruent with her otherwise exalted stature.

The spoon and spindle represent the two domains of the Matriarch within the household of the Early Middle Ages: the care of the household and the cottage-industry. The spoon represented the dominion Mary held over the daily activities of the household. Usually, the husband and sons would go out to work during the day and the mother, the sons’ wives, and any unmarried daughters would assist in the daily duties of the home. It was the matriarch who traditionally commanded the cooking as she was also in charge of making sure that food was rationed properly. During the Early Middle Ages, unless the family were merchants, the Matriarch would be the one to primarily handle the income. When the men of the family were working in the fields or in the workshops, the matriarch directed the cottage industry. She would be in charge of the work those left at home would do and the products that were produced. One of the most common of these was thread, as even the very young and the aged could spin, even if they were not able to do fine detail work like weaving or embroidery. The Matriarch would also often be the one to send the materials off to market and the one to receive payment for anything sold.

The spindle is common, yes. The spoon I don’t recall ever seeing before. You say it’s common. Can you link or name a single other depiction of Mary that has her holding a spoon?

I meant the theme that Mary was the Matriarch of Christ’s household was common. This is the time in history when Queens gradually became seen as the wife of the King, not the mother. While still seen as Queen, it was easier for people to identify Mary’s relationship with Christ as Matriarch than the Queenly wife. Although I do seem to remember an Illuminated manuscript from around the 11th century from a legendarium of Mary’s life which showed her cooking. I can’t find an image of it though.

P.S. The Met webpage linked earlier comments rather strangely

Sigh. This tends to happen with Liturgical Art even to “experts”. It is what you get when you have modern art historians or archaeologists trying to do theology, which are what these pieces were intended to be seen as. I went to the Holy Land and the tour guide, who was an archaeologist, try to convince us that Egyptian mosaic artists had decorated one of the ancient churches simply because there was an ibis on the mosaic on the floor. In liturgical art, however, the ibis was well known and used throughout Italian and Byzantine art to depict the lush beauty and abundance of paradise.

 

[ComplineSanFran]

Poor Jesus. Let’s not go that far…

Found it !

"had no special beauty or form to make us notice him; there was nothing in his appearance to make us desire him. " Isaiah 53:2.

Here is a lift from Wiki… I am being lazy, but they have the citations and I can’t find them in my own library right now. I was referring earlier to early church writers, not Isaiah, who could not have possibly been describing Jesus himself.

From Wiki: "The focus of many early sources was on Christ’s physical unattractiveness rather than his beauty. The 2nd century anti-Christian philosopher Celsus wrote that Jesus was “ugly and small” and similar descriptions are presented in a number of other sources as discussed extensively by Eisler who in turn often quotes from Dobschütz’ monumental Christusbilder

Tertullian states that Christ’s outward form was despised, that he had an ignoble appearance and the slander he suffered proved the ‘abject condition’ of his body. According to Irenaeus he was a weak and inglorious man and in The Acts of Peter he is described as small and ugly to the ignorant. Andrew of Crete relates that Christ was bent or even crooked and in The Acts of John he is described as bald-headed and small with no good looks.

As quoted by Eisler, 393–394, 414–415 both Hierosolymitanus and John of Damascus claim that “the Jew Josephus” described Christ as having had connate eyebrows with goodly eyes and being long-faced, crooked and well-grown. In a letter of certain bishops to the Emperor Theophilus, Christ’s height is described as three cubits (four feet six), which was also the opinion of Ephrem Syrus (320–379 AD),

“God took human form and appeared in the form of three human ells (cubits); he came down to us small of stature.”

Theodore of Mopsuhestia likewise claimed that the appearance of Christ was smaller than that of the children of Jacob (Israel). In the apocryphal Lentulus letter Christ is described as having had a reddish complexion, matching Muslim traditions in this respect.

Christ’s prediction that he would be taunted “Physician, heal yourself” may suggest that Christ was indeed physically deformed (‘crooked’ or hunch-backed) as claimed in the early Christian texts listed above. In fact, Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and Ambrose actually considered lack of physical attractiveness in Jesus as fulfilling the Messianic prophecy “Suffering Servant” narrative of [Isaiah 53].

 

[Latetotheparty]

Huh…
It seems quite a bit has been written about Jesus’s appearance.

I think it’s wonderful if Jesus came to us in that unattractive form when he could have presented as anything.

Three foot googly-eyed hunchback Jesus is still going to get the biggest hug from me when we meet again. I may have to ben down my 6ft spirit though.