The Virgin with the bush of pinks

the Virgin with the Bush of Pinks is a Retable on wood of 1473, of Martin Schongauer, exposed in the church of Dominican of Colmar, after having been stolen of the Collegial Saint Martin's day (Colmar).

Presentation

It represents the Virgin Mary holding between her arms the child Jesus.

Of certain way, beyond representation of emotions and of postures (to notice the detachment symbolized by the glances of the mother and the child which is in opposite direction), the painter carries out the orchestration of a lexicon symbolic system, like Kandinsky with the forms and the colors in its chromatic symphonies does it.

Lexicon symbolic system of the Middle Ages

  • the Rose crimson: It is the flower mariale par excellence. In the psalms the virgin is often compared with a garden of pinks or a flower (which is, it should be said in passing, the sex of the plants). She has a double significance symbolic system:

- symbol of the love and the compassion it represents also the blood lost by the martyrs for our sufferings and our passions.
- in addition, the Rose crimson is surrounded by another legend: Eastern flower, it would have been brought back of Holy Land to Provins after the Seventh crusade by the Compte of Champagne and of Navarre, trouvere celebrates, at the same time as a piece of the true Cross.

  • the white pink: Only one white pink appears in the table. According to the legendary medieval one, it is the symbol of the Mort (which spreads its white petals…) It could thus represent the future passion of Christ. Unless it is not about dead of the painter himself which, according to the terms of the inscription, beseeches the Virgin and asks him to accommodate it like his/her own child. (" me carps genito you quoque sanctissima virgo ")

  • the grenades: Symbol of fruitfulness by their texture which points out the bunches of abundant eggs of frogs and the fish

  • the Giroflée S: plant of the family of the Brassicacées, they are a symbol of the Croix of Christ.

  • the Lily: Symbols of the saints and the Martyrs.

  • the strawberry S: Their white flowers symbolize the purity and innocence. The three lobes of its sheets are an allusion to the Holy Trinity. Their red fruits evoke the blood of passion and the saints martyrs. They are also the food of the dead children in low age.

  • the Peony, pink of Pentecost: The Moyen-âge prètent particularly powerful healing virtues to him, in particular to look after the mental diseases and to entreat the bad fates thrown by magic.

  • the Robin: Symbol of the passion, whose heart, burned with the fire of heaven, appears on the throat.

  • the Sparrow: Symbol of modesty

Sources

  • comments posted in the Dominican church of Colmar where work is exposed

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