Martin Schongauer

Altarpiece of the Dominicans, c.1480, Oil on pine, 116 x 116 cm each panel, Musée d'Unterlinden, Colmar; akg-images / Joseph Martin

Blessed is the Fruit of thy Womb

Commentary by Jennie Grillo

Cite Share

The Song of Solomon encourages us to imagine a woman who is a landscape and who is in a landscape, both at the same time. That doubleness lies behind a scene which became a popular one in late medieval art, found here on an altarpiece from Colmar, France.

That scene is the Annunciation, imagined as taking place in an outdoor paradise. ‘A garden locked is my sister, my bride; a garden locked, a fountain sealed’ says the lover of the Song (4:12), and the hortus conclusus (closed garden) typical of Annunciation scenes, with a sealed fountain among its emblematic symbols, takes especial inspiration from this verse (Daley 1986: 253–78). The walled garden, with its tower and oak door, creates a hidden world like the lovers’ closed circle of two. Like theirs, it is an enchanted realm of natural beauty. The ground is a quiet riot of botanical charm, minutely variegated like the orchard of Song 4:13–14: here not spices but herbs, clover, grasses, wild flowers.

But the walls and gates of the garden on this altarpiece also speak of the woman at the heart of the garden. Here is Mary, the mother of Jesus: the turrets and bolts signal her virginity just as locks and seals speak of the exclusive fidelity of the beloved in the Song. At the centre of this garden grows a lily, a symbol for purity with a distant echo of Susanna; but the visitor who surprises the woman alone here is of a different kind to the spying elders. It is the angel Gabriel: suddenly, he is in the garden, a hunter blowing his horn.

A medieval hymn (the sequence Imperatrix gloriosa) finds here a reply to the woman’s command. ‘Awake, O north wind, and come, O south wind! Blow upon my garden’, she calls, and the answering breath is Gabriel’s, blowing like the gentle south wind and breathing word of the blossom and fruit she will bear.

 

References

Blume, Clemens S.J. 1915. ‘Imperatrix gloriosa’, in Analecta hymnica medii aevi 54 (Leipzig, O.R. Reisland), pp. 351–53

Daley, Brian E. 1986. ‘The “Closed Garden” and the “Sealed Fountain”: Song of Songs 4:12 in the Late Medieval Iconography of Mary’, in Medieval Gardens, ed. by Elizabeth B. MacDougall (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks), pp. 253–78

Wyss, Robert L. 1960. ‘Vier Hortus Conclusus-Darstellungen im Schweizerischen Landesmuseum’, Zeitschrift für Schweizerische Archäologie und Kunstgeschichte, 20: 113–24

See full exhibition for Song of Solomon 4:8–5:1

Song of Solomon 4:8–5:1

Revised Standard Version

8Come with me from Lebanon, my bride;

come with me from Lebanon.

Depart from the peak of Amaʹna,

from the peak of Senir and Hermon,

from the dens of lions,

from the mountains of leopards.

9You have ravished my heart, my sister, my bride,

you have ravished my heart with a glance of your eyes,

with one jewel of your necklace.

10How sweet is your love, my sister, my bride!

how much better is your love than wine,

and the fragrance of your oils than any spice!

11Your lips distil nectar, my bride;

honey and milk are under your tongue;

the scent of your garments is like the scent of Lebanon.

12A garden locked is my sister, my bride,

a garden locked, a fountain sealed.

13Your shoots are an orchard of pomegranates

with all choicest fruits,

henna with nard,

14nard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon,

with all trees of frankincense,

myrrh and aloes,

with all chief spices—

15a garden fountain, a well of living water,

and flowing streams from Lebanon.

16Awake, O north wind,

and come, O south wind!

Blow upon my garden,

let its fragrance be wafted abroad.

Let my beloved come to his garden,

and eat its choicest fruits.

5I come to my garden, my sister, my bride,

I gather my myrrh with my spice,

I eat my honeycomb with my honey,

I drink my wine with my milk.

Eat, O friends, and drink:

drink deeply, O lovers!

 

More Exhibitions