Читать книгу The Mystical Element of Religion - Friedrich von Hügel - Страница 151

And she evidently still went on increasing the number of the objects of her interest and affection, and the degree of her attachment to such objects as she already loved. For in her Codicil of the next year, January 1503, she gives a careful description of a picture now belonging to herself, “a ‘Majesty,’ representing the Virgin Mary with Saint Joseph, and the Lord Jesus at their feet, with her” (Fieschi-Adorni) “coat-of-arms painted within and without.” The picture evidently represented the Adoration of the Infant Jesus, and was painted on wood,—a triptych: with Catherine’s arms painted both inside and outside the two wings. She again describes it thus fully in her Wills of 1506 and 1509, leaving it, on all those occasions, to a certain Christofero de Clavaro (Christofer of Chiavari?). It is then quite clear both that this picture had been specially painted by some one for Catherine, and that Catherine, for some reason or reasons, greatly treasured it. Who then was the painter and what was the reason? I think both are not difficult to find.

We have seen how Catherine’s much-loved cousin, the widowed Tommasina Fiesca, had in 1497 moved into the Monastero Nuovo in the Aquasola quarter,—close to Catherine’s abode; so that the cousins will have met constantly from that time forward. We have also seen that this distinguished artist painted many a “Pietà” (the dead Christ on His Mother’s lap, possibly with Angels on each side), and executed a piece of needlework again representative of a group,—this time God the Father with many Angels above, and Christ below. Indeed Federico Alizeri has succeeded in rediscovering one of her works, a representation of Christ crowned with thorns and surrounded by the Instruments and Mysteries of His Passion, painted in fine outline upon sheepskin mounted on a wood-panel.[150] And we have seen how much Catherine had, as a child, been affected by a “Pietà,” and shall find her, even after this date, still affected by a religious picture. There can then be no reasonable doubt that Suor Tommasina was the painter and giver of this picture,—again a group, a “Maestà,” instead of the usual “Pietà.”

And the facts of Catherine caring to possess, to preserve, and to transmit something thus specially appropriated to herself, with her family arms upon a religious picture, are all deeply significant touches, and quite unlike what all the secondary, and even some of the primary, parts of the Vita would lead one to expect.