medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
On 07/07/13, Meg Cormack wrote:
> No doubt someone information about iconographic resources has already been posted on this site, but when I hunt through old message for "iconography" they are legion . . . in particular, I'm wondering if anyone knows what female saint would hold either three arrows or three pointy things pointing upward that might be interpreted as such. Ursula, as far as I have been able to determine, is usually depicted with one, and Christina (according to the one dictionary of saints' attributes at my disposal) has two, but the figure I'm interested in definitely has three - somethings. In one case, an enbroidery, they might even be stylized flowers, in which case the figure is probably Dorothy. They do look like arrows, though . . . Any help gratefully appreciated.
>
In my admittedly limited experience dictionaries of saints' attributes tend to give a fair amount of weight to Counter-Reformation and later iconographic systematization. Their assertions are thus are not always particularly reliable for medieval representations of saints, which latter can show greater variation than said assertions are wont to allow. In this case, I wonder whether the number of arrows usefully distinguishes a saint. Ursula, for example, sometimes has more than one arrow: she has two in this image of ca.1400 on a reliquary in the Sint-Janshospitaal, Bruges:
http://www.wga.hu/art/m/master/zunk_fl/sculptur/1/01ursula.jpg
and in this image of her (at far right) on the rood screen (completed, 1536) of All Saints, Litcham, Norfolk:
http://www.norfolkchurches.co.uk/litcham/images/dscf7229.jpg
and _three_ in this painting of ca. 1523 by Hans Holbein the Younger in the Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe:
http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/hans-holbein-the-younger/st-ursula
On the other hand, your dictionary of saints' attributes notwithstanding, Christina sometimes has but one arrow, as in this depiction of her (at right) in the late thirteenth-century Livre d'images de Madame Marie (ca. 1285-1290; Paris, BnF, ms. Nouvelle acquisition française 16251, fol. 102r):
http://tinyurl.com/yggk63b
and as in this painting of her in the lower right panel of an altarpiece by Sano di Pietro (d. 1481) in the basilica di Santa Caterina at Bolsena:
http://www.heiligenlexikon.de/Fotos/Christina13.jpg
and in the late fifteenth-century recumbent effigy, attributed to Benedetto Buglioni, on her tomb in the Grotta di Santa Cristina in Bolsena:
http://tinyurl.com/254dky5
Best,
John Dillon
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