At 11:13 PM -0500 1/21/06, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
I don't know a lot about the subject, but it strikes me as odd that one
group of orange beads is 9, while one is 8. Aren't rosaries in
groups of 10? Or
shouldn't they at least be all the same number?
In a painting, not necessarily -- but I see what you mean.
Ten is certainly the overwhelmingly common number of beads in a
group, with five as the runner-up. But paintings show bead numbers
all over the map -- 8, 3, 7, 9, et cetera. Similarly, the total
number of beads in a painting may be 39, 19, 16, or some other number
that (1) fits into the space on the painting, and (2) allows the
beads to be big enough that you can see what they are.
As for actual beads, the best evidence is in written documents, which
do generally talk about groups of ten. Surviving beads are relatively
few and have often been re-strung somewhere along the way, but
something like the Langdale gold rosary or Mary Queen of Scots'
rosaries indicate that ten-bead groups are indeed the norm.
* * * * * * * *
BTW, I haven't plugged my website Paternoster-Row or my Paternosters
blog in awhile, and I was going to mention them again anyway, since
I've just started a blog-post series on "Wearing your medieval
rosary."
* * * * * * * *
Some different numbers of beads for your entertainment:
The man in the woodcut about halfway down this page has twelve beads:
http://paternoster-row.org
This page shows St. Joseph's rosary from Rogier Van der Weyden's "The
Magdalen Reading", which has 16 beads:
http://paternosters.home.igc.org/02-linear/02-linear.html
There's another indefinite-numbered rosary being worn by St. Hedwig
on this page:
http://paternosters.home.igc.org/99-gallery/02-hedwig/02-hedwig.html
The classic, of course, is the beads of Catherine, Duchess of Cleves,
which appear as the border of a manuscript page:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/89815411/
Here's one that does seem to be consistently in groups of 10 (as far
as we can see):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/20904863/
Here's a particularly good example, I think, of "beads big enough
that you can see what they are" overriding realism:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/10134724/
--
____________________________________________________________
O Chris Laning <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> - Davis, California
+ http://paternoster-row.org - http://paternosters.blogspot.com
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