AIC's 52nd Annual Meeting

Non-invasive micro-scale analysis are bringing a revolution to the scholarly understanding of the texts and images of medieval manuscripts, unlocking new information about their current condition, original making, and meaning. A dramatic example of this was recently found in a diminutive devotional miscellany manuscript written circa. 1518 in the Upper Rhine region, currently part of the Library of Congress’s Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection.

Rosenwald Ms 13, Betrachtungen des Leidens Christi und Gebete für Klosterfrauen (Contemplations of the Passion of Christ and prayers for nuns) is a particularly interesting example of a manuscript crafted for devotional purposes, used and re-used over several centuries within the context of a female religious community in Germany. The hand-written text is decorated with red initials and highlights throughout, and small hand-colored woodcuts pasted into the book. These vary considerably in style, format, and palette, suggesting that they derive from multiple sources and may have been purchased already painted. One image stands out as exceptional: the Holy Face on folio 58v, which presents the face of Christ in shades of dark gray and black.

Technical study of the woodblock was conducted to learn whether the present appearance of the Holy Face is intentionally black due to deliberate material choices, or due to deterioration of the materials used. Synergistic application of x-ray fluorescence spectroscopy, reflectance spectroscopy, and multispectral imaging revealed that the present appearance is a combination of alterations and intent. Quite unexpectedly, the small painted image includes uncommon and novel material uses to render the unexpected palette. Identifying its present appearance as (largely) intentional fundamentally alters the meaning of the image, linking it not just to private devotional practice centered in the text on the page, but to the practices of pilgrimage, spiritual pilgrimage, and exchanges of relics and devotional images in the intellectual, social and spiritual lives of cloistered women of the era.