Holy Kinship

This essay discusses the late medieval extended family of saints known as The Holy Kinship (Saint Anne, her three daughters, and their offspring) as a way of thinking about the constructed and changing nature of family and kinship relations and about normative constructions of gender. Focussing also on the appearance of babies and books in many images of the Holy Kinship, it discusses the ideal of the learned woman in late medieval, Northern Europe, referencing a short text known as "The Twenty-One-Year-Old Woman."

Holy Family from Stonava and the Motif of Christ’s Female Genealogy in Late Medieval Art

The study deals with the matrilineal genealogy of Christ in the context of the cult of St. Anne in the Later Middle Ages and Early Reformation. In its first part it describes an iconography of the Holy Kinship in medieval art based on the example of two wooden reliefs from Stonava portraying Christ’s extended family. The second part of the text explores the concept of Christ’s matriliny in period thought and art together with gender aspects of the motif. The major part of the text is dedicated to a reflection of St. Anne as the mother of the Virgin Mary, matriarch of Christ’s family and female model par excellence in moral discourse of the period. As a product of a manipulative, theological construct she served as a paradigm of the perfect wife, mother, educator and the source of holy progeny for all levels of society of the time.

Desde el siglo XII la Iglesia de Santiago fue pionera en la cristiandad en promover el culto a María Salomé. Reivindicó la intercesión de la santa por el apóstol Santiago ante Cristo, así como las promesas cumplidas tras dicha petición para prestigiarse y reafirmarse como sede apostólica. Ello dio lugar a un buen número de imágenes de la santa, a la cual se le caracterizó siguiendo un modelo iconográfico local. // Since 12th century the Church of Santiago was a pioneer in the Christian world in to promote the worship of Mary Salome. It claimed her intercession for the apostle James before Christ and the promises fulfilled after the petition with the object to become prestigious and reaffirm itself as apostolic headquarters. This resulted in a good quantity of images of the saint, which was characterized with a local iconography.

Chap. 3. Because of the multitude of manifestations, it is difficult to reconstruct the coming into being of the biblical portrait historié. Different lines of development can be followed within classical and christian art. This religious type of disguised portraiture can only be partly explained by ideas about incarnation, christomimetes, and euhemerism. The identification with a biblical figure can perhaps be best interpreted through typology and anagogè. In religious art, the portrait historié developed from the donor portrait into the “portrait in assistance”, in which the patrons increasingly find their way to the centre of the composition, passively taking part in the sacred history. In the course of time, these passive witnesses gain a more active rol. An important group of works are portraits of burghers in Passion scenes: a specific kind of religious identification that can be connected with the ideas of Modern Devotion. When in later time the religious reform movements gained foothold in the Netherlands – on both sides of the denominational spectrum – it was mainly the epitaph (memorietafel) from which the autonomous biblical portrait historié developed.

With the coming of the Reformation, the dichotomy between ecclesiastical art and (civic) private art further widened but also resulted in the increase of religious paintings in secular spaces. Nevertheless, autonomous (non-devotional) portraits historiés with Old Testament subjects were already being painted for private homes from the last quarter of the 15th century onwards (e.g. David and Abigail by Hugo van der Goes). Looking across the borders, in France and Germany, one also finds precursors of the autonomous biblical group portraits that first appeared in the southern Netherlands in the last quarter of the 16th century. The diffusion of Reformation ideas also contributed to the rise of the portrait type. In Reformation exegesis the method of humanist allegoresis of scripture was transformed and analogies between biblical and contemporary events and individuals could also be understood in a more literal sense. As before in the Modern Devotion, the anagogy may also have played an important role, since according to the anagogical argument the image, as a substitute for a textual source, could elevate the beholder’s mind to immaterial realities and even a partial or complete union with God. Calvin’s more down-to-earth approach of art and preference for historical representations with a didactic function may also have had an indirect influence on the preferences of citizens in the Dutch Republic. Although portraits were deemed admissible in his view, het was critical of images ‘without meaning’: as a consequence portraits historiés would meet the requirements of art he had envisioned.

3. De ontwikkeling van het portrait historié vanaf de oudheid tot de reformatie 91
3.1. Mythologische voorbeelden uit de oudheid 93
3.2. Vroegchristelijk euhemerisme en de profane typologie 95
3.3. Representatie in vroegchristelijke en middeleeuwse portraits historiés. 98
3.4. Vroege portraits historiés: keizer Sigismund en de Vlaamse connectie 101
3.5. Van gehistoriseerd stichtersportret naar autonoom portrait historié 105
3.6. Assistentieportretten en geïntegreerde portraits historiés van burgers 113
3.7. Opname en inleving: portretten in Passiescènes en de moderne devotie 117
3.8. De Heilige Maagschap als gehistorieerd familieportret 123
3.9. Vroege autonome portraits historiés met oudtestamentische onderwerpen 130
3.10. Van humanistische allegorese naar reformatorisch historiebegrip 134
3.11. Euhemerisme en anagogische betekenisoverdracht 141

The painting from the collection of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, had probably been retouched before 1808, when the museum acquired the painting. In 1983-1989 it was decided to consolidate flaking paint, and remove discolored and oxidized varnish layers, as well as rough over-painting and retouches. Research revealed an extensive loss of original material and made clear that retouches and fills covered areas of the remainng original material as well. After filling the losses, different methods of retouching were considered, such as variations on the Italian tratteggio technique. In the continuation of the restoration by another restorer from 1991-2001, many ethical questions had to be readressed. After testing different methods, it was decided to use an illusionistic method of integral restoration. This involved removing some of the retouches and fillings applied in 1983-1989, and led to the discovery of more original material under the older retouches. Flaking paint was again conso...