A practical point on the way Mary holds the infant Jesus. Most women will
automatically hold a baby with the left arm. This is because
(a) this holds the baby against your heart and the heartbeat is soothing:
and
(b) because most of us are right-handed and holding the baby with the left
leaves the right hand free to knead bread, stir soup, type learned articles
or whatever.
So possibly what we are looking at is whether these images were produced by
people who knew how mothers tend to hold babies.
I have somewhere got pictures of monastic seals which i think show the
Throne of Wisdom with Mary holding Jesus on the left and feeding him. (And
I do remember editing a text when my daughter was a baby and typing it all
with the right hand and getting very lopsided in the process because it was
the only way to keep her quiet.)
Didn't we have a thread on Joseph recently? I think I printed out some
references but can't now lay hands on them. but Sheingorn notes the
increased importance of sacred fathers in the later iconography of the Holy
Kinship
(Ashley, Kathleen, and Pamela Sheingorn, 1990. Interpreting Cultural
Symbols: Saint Anne in Late Medieval Society. Athens and London: University
of Georgia Press ) and suggests it has to do with male attempts to
recolonise a female space in iconography.
Best wishes
Maddy
Dr Madeleine Gray
Department of Humanities and Science
UWCN
'Reading is sometimes an ingenious device for avoiding thought'
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