The Votive Scenario
206 RES 59/60 SPRING/AUTUMN 2011 FOR POSITION ONLY Figure 1. St. Anthony, south Germany, mid-fifteenth century. Hand-colored woodcut, 38.1 x 26.4 cm. Photo: Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich, Inv. Nr. 118224 D. The votive scenario CHRISTOPHER S. WOOD Three sufferers, bodies convulsed, inflamed limbs things.2 The votaries and supplicants bear or proffer brandished, beg for the attention of the enthroned healer objects: the badges pinned to the hat, small crosses, a (fig. 1). The men at lower left and right, with crutches, fowl, a mannikin, wax models of bodies or extremities. have traveled some distance: The purses at their waists The objects attest to states of mind and to successful and the hat with upturned visor adorned with metal exchanges with entities outside ordinary experience— badges, souvenirs of shrines visited, suggest as much. The divinity itself, or a holy man who manages destructive healer is remote, imperturbable. fire. At the pilgrimage site—so the picture suggests—the Flanking his throne, thrusting gifts into his field of pilgrims perform for one another. The pilgrim is an vision, are four healthy visitors, two wearing fur-lined object in the eyes of other pilgrims, no less so than hats that imply affluence, another with the armor and are the displayed wax body parts. But above all the sword of a well-born soldier. These four are completing a pilgrims perform for the powerful saint, the third- and cycle of entreaty and thanks. They or someone close to fourth-century Egyptian hermit St. Anthony Abbot or St. them was delivered or spared from the fearsome Anthony the Great.
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