Half of a Prayer Bead with the Lamentation

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The paired medallions of this relatively modest carving not only illustrate the use of boxwood prayer beads but also seem to echo the recommendation of the fifteenth-century Dominican theologian Alanus de Rupe for praying the Rosary. He advised that the first fifty prayers be said before an image of the Virgin and Child and the second fifty before an image of Jesus crucified. Here, the robe of the woman kneeling in prayer, a string of beads in hand, touches that of Mary, and Jesus looks straight at her. Does she kneel before a statue, an image in her own head, or a miraculous apparition? In the companion image, Mary, Saint John, and Mary Magdalene mourn the death of Jesus. Devotion has caused the collapse of time and space.

Medieval Art and The Cloisters

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Museum's collection of medieval and Byzantine art is among the most comprehensive in the world. Displayed in both The Met Fifth Avenue and in the Museum's branch in northern Manhattan, The Met Cloisters, the collection encompasses the art of the Mediterranean and Europe from the fall of Rome in the fourth century to the beginning of the Renaissance in the early sixteenth century. It also includes pre-medieval European works of art created during the Bronze Age and early Iron Age.

Metropolitan Museum of Art