Peter’s Mother-in-Law

Rembrandt van Rijn repeatedly returned to biblical subjects throughout his long and prodigious career, at a time when many of his Dutch contemporaries were eschewing them in favour of contemporary subjects like city views, portraits, and genre painting. The 1650s, to which this drawing, The Healing of Peter’s Mother-in-Law, is tentatively dated, was a fertile period for his production of these works, not only as drawings but also as etchings and paintings.

Here Rembrandt depicts the crucial moment from Mark’s account where Jesus takes the hand of Peter’s mother-in-law and helps her to her feet—thus effecting a miraculous cure by touch (as specified in Mark’s account). It is a strikingly intimate portrayal of the scene, which is rarely represented in art of any medium. This approach, in which extraneous supporting characters are stripped back so as to focus fully on the story’s protagonists, is characteristic of Rembrandt’s treatment of biblical scenes—subject matter often used in teaching works for pupils (Schatborn 2010: 85).

This is also a scene of action—the figures are in motion, and the cure that Christ is effecting is in process. Christ steps down with his right foot, as he bends towards Peter’s mother-in-law. The two exchange glances. With a few expertly judged strokes of the pen, Rembrandt implies the clenched jaw of Peter’s mother-in-law as the fever leaves her and she uncertainly attempts to stand, as well as the calm, downturned countenance of the healing Christ. Similarly, a few lines are all that’s needed to indicate the two pairs of hands clasped together, or the mattress from which Peter’s mother-in-law rises—none of which is fully drawn.

Position, line work, and light source combine to make Christ the focal point of the work for viewers who can (Rembrandt seems to suggest) like Peter’s mother-in-law find salvation by focussing their gaze on Jesus.

References

Schatborn, Peter. 2010. Rembrandt and His Circle: Drawings in the Frits Lugt Collection, 2 vols (Paris: THOTH)

Made completely from wax, this small-scale figure of a woman stands with her hands held in prayer. This 15cm-tall sculpture was offered at the tomb of Bishop Edmund Lacey (d.1455) in Exeter Cathedral in Devon alongside countless others—feet, hands, people, horses, pigs, and cows to name a few. The ex-voto was discovered by chance when the tomb was damaged in an air raid during the Second World War, along with around 1,000 wax fragments of differing shapes and sizes (Radford 1949).

From her dress and veil, the sculpture is commonly dated to the late 1400s. She is a rare, possibly unique for the period, survival of a vibrant kind of everyday devotional object employed in late medieval and Renaissance Europe—the wax ex-voto.

Although little survives of these artefacts today beyond documentation, they were popularly used across Catholic Europe and pre-Reformation England and continue to be used in certain contexts today. Wax ex-votos numbered among an almost infinite multiplicity of votive offerings—from the building of chapels to the leaving of expurgated fishbones, and everything in between—made at shrines by individuals or groups. These offerings were most commonly (but not always) made in thanks for received grace, and offered to a holy intercessor at a shrine or other significant location.

Many votaries who offered ex-votos were suffering from an illness, like Peter’s mother-in-law (others had faced a different kind of danger—shipwreck, famine, execution). The offering of an ex-voto indicated votaries’ faith that their intercessor would successfully mediate a miraculous cure. Gospel stories such as the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law also provided the framework for votaries to navigate periods of ill health through devotion.

References

Radford, U. M. 1949. ‘The Wax Images Found in Exeter Cathedral’, Antiquaries Journal, 29: 164–68

Pieter Brueghel the Elder’s bustling scene is filled with vignettes from daily life in the southern Netherlands in the mid-sixteenth century. These figures represent the two diametrically opposed sides of the forty days preceding Easter. The ribald excess of the last few days before Lent, culminating on Shrove Tuesday—filled with gluttony and gaming—contrasts with the severe austerity of Lent—with its prayer, pilgrims, and alms. This tradition still continues in much of the Catholic Low Countries. 

The two main protagonists, themselves personifications of Carnival and Lent, prepare to do battle in the foreground. On the left, Carnival, a fat butcher astride a barrel, wields a spit laden with meat as a lance. Facing him, Lent, a cadaverous woman on a hard wooden chair, is pulled forward by a monk and a nun. Lent wields a long paddle used by bakers to slide bread in and out of the oven, topped with two herrings, representative of foods typically consumed during the period of Lenten fast. 

Although firmly anchored in a typical market square, Brueghel’s painting is rich with symbols relating to the struggle between Carnival and Lent—symbolism that would have been familiar to his contemporaries from traditions, proverbs, and other literary and visual sources. For example, the inn that dominates the left-hand side of the painting is named ‘In the Blue Barge’ (In de Blauwe Schuit), a reference to the guild of the blue barge, a ritual brotherhood active during Shrovetide (Lichtert 2014: 85–86). The guild took part in Carnival processions, mocking the established social order through costumes and acts. Also present, however, are scenes that would have been a familiar part of any town. 

At the top right a woman sells wax ex-votos from a table outside the church, its statues veiled for Lent.

The opposing camps of Carnival and Lent represent rejoicing and renewal respectively—two qualities also embodied by the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law. 

References

Lichtert, Katrien. 2014. ‘The Artist, the City and the Urban Theatre: Pieter Bruegel’s ‘Battle between Shrovetide and Lent’ (1559) Reconsidered’, in Portraits of the City: Representing Urban Space in Later Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. by Katrien Lichtert, Jan Dumolyn, and Maximiliaan P. J. Martens (Turnhout: Brepols), pp. 83–96