プレゼントでもらった写本
こないだの複製・装飾写本についていた解説が興味深かったのでメモ。
【ROOT OF JESSE AND CRUCIFIXION】
Donaueschingen Sacramentarium
Ms.185 fol.7b and 8a,F.F.Hofbobliothek(Court Library),Donaueschigen
The small parchment manuscript comprising 198 folios in a red leather binding came,according to its Calendar,from a Dominican monastery in the Strassburg diocese, and was brought to the nunnery Schoenensteinbach, in the diocese of Basle, by the end of the 14th century.
The codex has only two whole-page miniatures which belong together and point to a time of origin around 1253-60.
According to a handwritten entry,the famous collector Abbot Philipp Jacob Steyrer acquired the codex in 1781 for the Benedictine monastery of St.Peter in the Black Forest; and 1865 the codex came to Donaueschingen.
The manuscript should be described as a sacramentarium or psalter - there are texts from both in it.
The ornamented initials are of a rather mediocre kind, so all the more striking are the artistic quality and the remarkable iconography of the two related miniatures(fols 7b and 8a), between the Calendar and Psalter.
【ROOT OF JESSE】
The title used for this picture is unusual because it always meant the representation of Christ's family tree coming forth from His ancestorJessse(Matt.Ⅰ 5-6).
But the present picture is mainly referring to Christ's mother,Mary.
It is true that the ornamental green tendril with red blossom grows from Jesse,who is lying asleep on a carpet at the bottom.
Yet,the scroll next to him describes him as the ancestor of the Virgin:egreditur virga de radice Jesse(Is ⅠⅠ,Ⅰ).
Next to Jesse are the spiritual ancestors placed in chairs,first two of the Great Prophets,Jesais(left) and Jeremias(right),who foretold the birth of the Mesias from the Virgin,as the scrolls quote;Ecce virgo concipiet(Is 7,14) and: femina circumdabid virum(Jer 31,22). Both their names appear in the frame of the picture.
Above, in the upper corners, there are the kingly ancestor of Mary:Jesse's son David David's son Solomon, both crowned and enthroned, again with scrolls referring to Chirist's mother:venter tuus sicut acervus tritici("Thy belly is like a heap of wheat",Sol. 7,2).
In the centre of the picture, Mary is sitting with Jesus on her lap, placed against a golden background. Dressed in a blue robe and a red cloak she sits on a throne with cushions and carpet like those of the kings.
Her unbound, curly hair remains uncoverd, as customary with virgins, and she is crowned with a chaplet of bllossoms.
Tenderly,in a natural position, she is holding the Child, clad in white, on her knee.
There is nothing left of the majestic and statuesque Mother of God represented in earlier Byzantine and Romanesque pictures.
The child puts his little arm around his mother's neck, and with a loving gesture she touches with her cheek and hand her child's head.
Seven stylised birds, usually interpreted as doves,fly above Mayr's head, beyond the framework of the picture and at her side, below the kings.
The doves are symbols of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit(Is ⅠⅠ,2)
【CRUCIFIXION】
This pictures shows even more iconogrphic peculiarities than the picture of the Madonna to which it corresponds. The cross is a green stem with four circular tendrils smilar to the Root of Jesse.
The split stem pins the Devil, dragonlike monster, to the ground(Ps.73,14).
Chirist's body is bent in death, his head rests on his chest and his eyes are closed.
Blood spreds from his hands, his legs are crossed sot that only three nails fix him to the cross ― a number which was to receive symbolic meaning.
Like Mary in the left pictures, Christ's suffering figure is removed from the majestic, unreal model og eariler representations of the theme.
Next to the cross, at the left, stand Mary and allegory of the victorious Christian Church, the Ecclesia, who catches Chirist's blood in a chalice.
To the right, St.John recoils with a gesture of dismay, he steps in front of the defeated Jewih Church, the Synagogue, recognisable by her bandaged eyes, her dropping crown, the broken shafts of her banners and the head of a male goat, the sign of Jewish sacrifice.
In the circles of the tendrils three Virtues(Humanities, Obedientia and Misericordia),represented as virgins with chaplets in their flowing hair,a are kneeling and nailing Christ's hands and feet to the cross, while a fourth Virtue(Caritas) opens his side with a lance.
The meaning of this strange iconogrphy is mentioned in the old exegesis which says that these four virtues brought Christ to the cross, saving mankind from evil.
Above the cross a Pelican is nourishing its young with the blood of its breast, a symbol of Christ's sacrificing his blood for mankind.
The open door of Heaven, in the upper frames, alludes to the salvation offered by Christ'death.
