Читать книгу The Anatomical Venus - Joanna Ebenstein - Страница 66

(71) raised the price of wax, as the demand for candles for use at funerals was vastly increased. For many commoners beeswax was an expensive luxury only expe rienced at a funeral service; ordinary candles were made of tallow. The Roman Catholic tradition of Agnus Dei—wax amulets imprinted with an image of a lamb bearing a cross or flag, symbolizing Jesus Christ, and blessed by the pope— depends upon such associations, as do the anatomically themed wax votives known as ex-votos, or boti, which are left at a candlelit church or shrine to com memorate or request divine intervention. In the thirteenth century, St Francis of Assisi used a wax impression as a metaphor for the inner transformation of his religious experience, stating in the Canticle of Love: ‘My heart softens like melted wax, and the form of Christ is traced upon it.’ fig. 30 Modern-day wax anatomical votive, made in Fatima, Portugal. Votives are used to request or offer thanks for healing. The shape reflects the ailing body part. fig. 31 fig. 32 The physical body that is itself evoked by wax holds a special and seemingly paradoxical position in Christian belief. As the seat of the passions and of sin, the body must be tamed or mortified, yet in one of the central mysteries of the faith Christ was ‘the Word made flesh’: simultaneously man and God. Jesus lived and suffered in a human body that was given in the ultimate sacrifice, one that rendered all further animal sacrifice unnecessary. The sinful and fleeting pleasures of the body are believed to be mere vanities compared to the ever lasting life that awaits the virtuous in heaven; yet the corporeal bodies of the faithful are essential to their salvation, and are believed to be resurrected and reunited with their souls in heaven when the trumpets sound on Judgement Day. Even in everyday religious observance, the body is central to the rite of the Eucharist, or Holy Communion, a commemoration of the Last Supper in which the believer eats a wafer and drinks wine that has been converted by the priest into the body and blood of Christ. Predicated on such equivocal meanings of the body, the Catholic ‘cult of the saints’ concerns the desire to be close to the powerful physical remains of saints. fig. 31 Francesco Stelluti’s engraving from 1625 combines an early illustration of bees observed through a microscope with a Latin poem complimenting Pope Urban VIII, whose family’s emblem was bees, and to whom the image was presented. fig. 32 Beekeepers and the Birdnester (c. 1568) as depicted in pen and ink by Pieter Brueghel the Elder. AV_00966_pre-pdf layout_001_215.indd 71 12/01/2016 12:14 from sacred to scientific use of wax[2]