Last updated South Netherlandish, boxwood, diameter: 3 cm, early 16th century
Half of a Prayer Bead with the Lamentation (or Prayer Bead with the Prayer of the Rosary and the Lamentation) (MS 17.190.458a, b) refers to a pair of Gothic boxwood miniature medallions originating from Flanders around the early 16th century, probably between 1490-1530.[1] Made from boxwood and silver, they were originally the interiors of a prayer nut (a type of prayer bead).
One interior shows the Virgin and Child alongside a kneeling nun who holds a string of beads in her hand and is shown facing the saints. The inside border of the medallion is inscribed with the words "O mater dei memento mei" (O Mother of God, remember me).[2] The second interior shows a somber Pietà, with Mary, Saint John and Mary Magdalene mourning the death of Jesus.[3] It is lined with an inscription taken from Acts 7:59 which reads: d[omi]ne ih[s]u xr[ist]e accipe spi[rit]u[m] meu[m] (Lord Jesus Christ, receive my spirit [Acts 7:59]).[3]
Unusually for objects of this type, which are characterised by their approach to Horror vacui (fear of empty space), very little of the available border surface is used for inscriptions,[2] indeed the objects are not as detailed as most other extant boxwood prayer nuts, and have been described as "modest".[3]
Boehm, Barbara Drake; Suda, Alexandra. "Handpicked: Collecting Boxwood Carvings from the Sixteenth to the Twenty-First Centuries." In: Scholten, Frits (ed), "Small Wonders: Late-Gothic Boxwood Micro-Carvings from the Low Countries". Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum, 2016.
The Rosary, also known as the Dominican Rosary, refers to a set of prayers used primarily in the Catholic Church, and to the physical string of knots or beads used to count the component prayers. When referring to the prayer, the word is usually capitalized ; when referring to the prayer beads as an object, it is written with a lower-case initial letter.
The Cloisters, also known as the Met Cloisters, is a museum in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Upper Manhattan, New York City. The museum, situated in Fort Tryon Park, specializes in European medieval art and architecture, with a focus on the Romanesque and Gothic periods. Governed by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it contains a large collection of medieval artworks shown in the architectural settings of French monasteries and abbeys. Its buildings are centered around four cloisters—the Cuxa, Saint-Guilhem, Bonnefont and Trie—that were acquired by American sculptor and art dealer George Grey Barnard in France before 1913, and moved to New York. Barnard's collection was bought for the museum by financier and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller Jr. Other major sources of objects were the collections of J. P. Morgan and Joseph Brummer.
Buxus is a genus of about seventy species in the family Buxaceae. Common names include box or boxwood.
The Melisende Psalter is an illuminated manuscript commissioned around 1135 in the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, probably by Fulk, King of Jerusalem for his wife Queen Melisende. It is a notable example of Crusader art, which resulted from a merging of the artistic styles of Roman Catholic Europe, the Eastern Orthodox Byzantine Empire and the art of the Armenian illuminated manuscript.
Miniature art includes paintings, engravings and sculptures that are very small; it has a long history that dates back to prehistory. The portrait miniature is the most common form in recent centuries, and from ancient times, engraved gems, often used as impression seals, and cylinder seals in various materials were very important. For example most surviving examples of figurative art from the Indus Valley civilization and in Minoan art are very small seals. Gothic boxwood miniatures are very small carvings in wood, used for rosary beads and the like.
The Dragomirna Monastery was built during the first three decades of the 17th century, 15 km from Suceava, in the Mitocu Dragomirnei commune. It is the tallest medieval monastery in northern Moldavia and renowned in Orthodox architecture for its unique proportions and intricate details, mostly carved into stone. It lies among forested hills of fir and oak. The history of the monastery started in 1602, when the small church in the graveyard was built and dedicated to Saints Enoch, Elijah, and John the Theologian. In 1609 the dedication of the larger church was made to the "Descent of the Holy Spirit".
The Cloisters Cross, is a complex 12th-century ivory Romanesque altar cross or processional cross. It is named after The Cloisters, part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which acquired it in 1963.
In 1898 Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild bequeathed to the British Museum as the Waddesdon Bequest the contents from his New Smoking Room at Waddesdon Manor. This consisted of a wide-ranging collection of almost 300 objets d'art et de vertu, which included exquisite examples of jewellery, plate, enamel, carvings, glass and maiolica. One of the earlier objects is the outstanding Holy Thorn Reliquary, probably created in the 1390s in Paris for John, Duke of Berry. The collection is in the tradition of a schatzkammer, or treasure house, such as those formed by the Renaissance princes of Europe; indeed, the majority of the objects are from late Renaissance Europe, although there are several important medieval pieces, and outliers from classical antiquity and medieval Syria.
The Hours of Mary of Burgundy is a book of hours, a form of devotional book for lay-people, completed in Flanders around 1477, and now in the National Library of Austria. It was probably commissioned for Mary, the ruler of the Burgundian Netherlands and then the wealthiest woman in Europe. No records survive as to its commission. The book contains 187 folios, each measuring 225 by 150 millimetres. It consists of the Roman Liturgy of the Hours, 24 calendar roundels, 20 full-page miniatures and 16 quarter-page format illustrations. Its production began c. 1470, and includes miniatures by several artists, of which the foremost was the unidentified but influential illuminator known as the Master of Mary of Burgundy, who provides the book with its most meticulously detailed illustrations and borders. Other miniatures, considered of an older tradition, were contributed by Simon Marmion, Willem Vrelant and Lieven van Lathem. The majority of the calligraphy is attributed to Nicolas Spierinc, with whom the Master collaborated on other works and who may also have provided a number of illustrations.
Founded in 1992 the Museum of Mining and Gothic Art Leogang ist located in Hütten, Leogang,Zell am See District, in the Austrian Province of Salzburg.
Prayer Bead with the Adoration of the Magi and the Crucifixion is a small south Netherlandish prayer nut, carved in fine-grained boxwood, dated c 1500–10. It is now in the collection of The Cloisters, New York. Originally the bead would have been part of a complete rosary set, and its size suggests its use as an Ave bead, where the supplicant would recite the "Hail Mary". Objects of this type were in great demand in the early sixteenth century. Apart from use in private veneration, they could be worn as necklaces or hung from belts as fashionable accessories. The exceptional craftsmanship of this example indicates that it was intended for a member of the high nobility. J. P. Morgan donated the bead to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1917.
Gothic boxwood miniatures are very small Christian wood sculptures produced during the 15th and 16th centuries in the Low Countries, at the end of the Gothic period and during the emerging Northern Renaissance. They consist of highly intricate layers of reliefs, often rendered to nearly microscopic level, and are made from boxwood, which has a fine grain and high density suitable for detailed micro-carving. There are around 150 surviving examples; most are spherical rosary beads, statuettes, skulls, or coffins; some 20 are in the form of polyptychs, including triptych and diptych altarpieces, tabernacles and monstrances. The polyptychs are typically 10–13 cm in height. Most of the beads are 10–15 cm in diameter and designed so they could be held in the palm of a hand, hung from necklaces or belts, or worn as fashionable accessories.
Prayer nuts or Prayer beads are very small 16th century small Gothic boxwood miniature sculptures, mostly originating from the north of today's Holland. They are typically detachable and open into halves of highly detailed and intricate Christian religious scenes. Their size varies between the size of a walnut and a golf ball. They are mostly the same shape, decorated with carved openwork Gothic tracery and flower-heads. Most are 2–5 cm in diameter and designed so they could be held in the palm of a hand during personal devotion or hung from necklaces or belts as fashionable accessories.
Miniature Altarpiece with the Crucifixion is a very small and complex early 16th century Netherlandish microcarved miniature sculpture in boxwood, now in The Cloisters, New York. The central carvings of the upper triptych show the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus, each outer wing contains two scenes from the biblical Old Testament. The complex base contains a round carving which opens like a boxwood prayer nut.
Adam Dircksz is the name ascribed by some art historians to a highly influential Dutch sculptor whose workshop is often attributed with the creation of around 60 of the c. 150 extant Gothic boxwood miniature micro-carvings. Other historians prefer to attribute various unrelated artists who are given individual or grouped notnames. It may be that the master was the innovator in this style of sculpture, and that similar works were directly inspired. According to the British Museum, Dircksz may have served "elite patrons in the circle of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, with a strong link to Delft."
Alexandra Suda is a Canadian art historian who was formerly the director of the National Gallery of Canada. In 2022, she was appointed the director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
The miniature altarpiece in the British Museum, London, is a very small portable Gothic boxwood miniature sculpture completed in 1511 by the Northern Netherlands master sometimes identified as Adam Dircksz, and members of his workshop. At 25.1 cm (9.9 in) high, it is built from a series of architectural layers or registers, which culminate at an upper triptych, whose center panel contains a minutely detailed and intricate Crucifixion scene filled with multitudes of figures in relief. Its outer wings show Christ Carrying the Cross on the left, and the Resurrection on the right.
The Adoration of the Magi altarpiece is a small Gothic boxwood miniature, made in the Netherlands c. 1500–1530, attributed to the workshop of Adam Dircksz. Such rarefied and highly ornate objects were intended for private devotion, tand took, by modern art historian estimates, decades to complete, periods equivalent to the entire career of a medieval master carver. Just around 150 of these sculptures from the late 15th and early 16th centuries remain today, and the elite echelons of collectors in the 19th century placed a high value on them despite the fact that it is unknown how many of them were manufactured.
The Miniature Altarpiece in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, is a small, 9.3 cm high, Gothic boxwood miniature triptych completed in the Netherlands c. 1500-1520. The central carving is made from boxwood and shows a relief of the Virgin and Child attended by two saints, thought to be Anne, who is shown with wings and holding a large crucifix, and James the Great who wears a hat and holds a staff. The outer semi-circular wings and shell are lined with silver and decorated with foliate designs. It stands on a silver plinth with pierced quatrefoils, and topped by a cherub's head and a statuette of God the Father. It is thought the silver-work was added between 1550-1570.
The Miniature Altarpiece is a Gothic boxwood miniature in the form of a small altarpiece, made in the Netherlands c.1520-1530, probably by the workshop of Adam Dircksz, about whom almost nothing is known. It has been held by the Louvre since 1901, but is not on public display. It was displayed with other boxwood miniatures in 2016–17 in an exhibition that visited the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Rijksmuseum.
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