The Mystic Marriage of St Catherine, St John the Baptist, St Antony Abbotby Michelino da Besozzo
c. 1420
Tempera on wood, 75 x 58 cm
Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena
Here we see Jesus proving his love for Saint Catherine by giving her a ginormous ring.
It's all about the gold in this painting: the ring is gold, the hat-halos are gold, the chair is gold and the figures sort of float in a sea of goldness. I think the artist had a fun time rendering all the different skin tones, too.
Is that a rat in the lower right corner? Or a tiny pig?
1 comment:
The thing I find strange is how old painters usually show John the Baptist as an old man. He was only six months older than Jesus and died early in Christ's ministry that supposedly started when he was 30 yrs old the age when Jewish scholars could take students and be called Master. So John should look like a young man in his prime. I've read that during the Middle Ages they started portraying John as an old man because they didn't believe youth could have any real wisdom. So they twisted history to fit their perceptions of life.
As for Catherine claiming to have had a spiritual marriage to Christ that must have been tramatizing to the Catholic Church that considered her a mystic in good standing. Instead of showing Christ, whom they declared never had sex while on earth as an adult they usually show him as a one or two year old in mom's lap because the implications of marriage, usually done to have "legal" sex, and children was always too appalling a thought for him in either his life time or as a resurrected being. They considered sex a necessary "evil" but certainly never an option to a holy man much less God. All the major prophets were married but as was Peter but later that is usually quietly ignored. Personally I think the wedding at Cana was Christ's and that he had at least two wives (which was legal back then and especially for a "King.") I believe one wife was Mary Magdalene (a wife not just a lover) and the other Mary of Bethany. Unlike some theorists I don't think the two were the same Mary. I think Di Vinci's first version of the Madonna of the Rocks may have been a depiction of these two Mary's and not Mary, the angel Uriel, Jesus and John. Too long to go into this subject. I think the Templar seal of two men on horseback represent those two lines and not just two poor knights sharing what they have (they could never have fought like that in battle). Anyway I've seen another 1300's painting that has baby Jesus giving rings to seven women, two who are queens. The art historian claims it is just a symbol of women becoming nuns but I think it went deeper than that. Those gals were there to be wives to an adult man. I think they were the wives of his past not contemporary of the artist's day. In Matthew 27:55 ..."and many women were there beholding afar off, which followed Jesus from Galilee ministering unto him..." His mom and some older women were there but I think a couple at least were wives. Isaiah says the suffering servant would live to see his seed. The anti-married Christians say this meant He saw his church get started but I think it means exactly what seed meant when used for every other person in the Bible. He lived to see his children.
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