Christ Child Research Articles

Close-Up Gallery: <em>Precious</em>

Close-Up GalleryPrecious David C. Wall (bio) This issue of Black Camera has a special focus on Lee Daniels's 2009 award-winning Precious.1 The story of the film's production, development, distribution, and (largely) critical and popular success is by now well known. The Close-Up section acknowledges the significance of this film by engaging with the myriad complicated discourses that surround the movie. The essays and commentaries included reveal the multiplicity of readings available to the thoughtful critic as well as the contentious and provocative nature of the film itself. This complexity is further attested to by the artwork on the cover and accompanying this special section. Precious is a difficult film to watch. It has to be acknowledged that a significant part of its power as a work of cinema is in its stark and unrelenting rendering of trauma and abjection. Yet, at the same time, it is filled with moments of quiet joy and dignity. And it is, perhaps, in those moments of joy and dignity that a larger truth of Precious might be found. At the same time, there are very specific African American social, historical, and cultural contexts in which the film is situated. This is, at least in part, a cause of some significant debate surrounding the cultural labor of Precious. Is it an excoriating indictment of a society in which a black underclass is left to rot? Or is it merely one more predictable iteration of the pathology of the black family that panders to white liberal sensibilities? It is, of course, both and more. While implicitly acknowledging the historical and cinematic contexts of the film, Adele Stephenson's portrait of Claireece "Precious" Jones moves away from the more immediate and obvious images of deprivation and despair. The painting positions Precious not only in the milieu of contemporary black urban life but also in the traditions of Western art history, especially as that history relates to images of mother and child. Stephenson's immediate reference point is a painting by Raphael entitled Madonna and Child with Book (ca. 1502), but of course images of motherhood are found in the Western tradition going as far back as ancient Rome when pictures of mothers and children—known as caritas—functioned as visual embodiments of charity and kindness. Our own visual encoding of motherhood is [End Page 220] dominated by images of the Virgin Mary. Indeed, we might argue that all images of motherhood are in some way related to the powerful ubiquity of Christian imagery that for centuries has located Mary at the visual center of discourses of maternity, nurturing, kindness, and humanity. For Stephenson the relationship between Precious and her children became the central element in the film. "I watched the film a number of times before beginning the work. What struck me, what the thread was for me, was a single line of the relationship between Precious and her own children."2 The image of mother and child becomes, then, the central point for the collision of the multiple discourses in the film and the social tensions that are played out through the stultifying intimacy of the domestic arena. Though images of the Virgin and Christ child are ubiquitous, as a genre they offer an almost limitless set of versions, variations, and visions. Modern versions have abounded as a consequence of both the development of technologies of communication and reproduction and, perhaps ironically, the secularization of Western culture that has allowed the image to proliferate through countless utilities of commodification unimaginable prior to the twentieth century. Stephenson's own painting engages with these disparate iterations of the Virgin and Christ child while reaching back to some core elements that express peace, abundance, and, most importantly, hope. It is with this sense of hope that Stephenson has attempted to imbue the image of Precious. Notwithstanding the ruptured vision of motherhood presented by Precious's own mother, the portrait of Precious Jones is designed to encourage a nuanced reading of the character that articulates much more than yet another vision of victimhood. In speaking to the film's broader politics, Stephenson is, thus, making an effort to avoid equating blackness with the...

Een altaarstuk voor parochianen en pelgrims in Heiloo

The Roman Catholic Parish of Heiloo, a village near Alkmaar, possesses a painting dated 1631 combining three scenes. The top part shows St. Dominic and St. Catherine of Siena receiving the Rosary from Mary and the Christ child (fig. 1). This occurrence takes place on what seems to be the roof of a gallery, under which the two other scenes are located. To the right St. Dominic is seen performing a miracle: while in Toulouse, the heretic Albigenses challenged him to throw his writings in the fire, but they bounced back unscathed three times, causing the Albigenses to repent. A print by Theodoor Galle (fig. 2) was the basis for the composition. At the left St. Willibrord, who converted large parts of the Netherlands to Christianity in the eight century and became the first bishop of Utrecht, is shown praying next to a well in Heiloo, his followers standing by. The well as it looked in 1631 and the medieval church that still stands in the center of the village (fig. 5) are both portrayed in this scene. The painting was most probably commissioned as an altarpiece for a clandestine catholic church not far from the place where it is currently kept. In the first decades of the seventeenth century Heiloo was administered by Dominican missionaries, which explains the prominence of Dominican saints in two of the three scenes. The most prominent Dominican priest was Hyacintus Hermanni (fig. 6), a native of Alkmaar, who is here identified as the patron for this altarpiece. It is not signed, but there are strong similarities with the style of Alkmaar's leading figure painter at the time, Nicolaes van der Heck (fig. 8). Hermanni's portrait can be found to the right of the pillar dividing the two scenes, looking at the viewer and wearing liturgical clothing. The 'Well of Willibrord' had been a destination for pilgrims since late Medieval times, and on closer inspection the theme of pilgrimage pervades the whole painting. One of the followers of St. Willibrord was St. Adalbert (fig. 11), who was buried in the neighbouring village of Egmond, close to the famous Egmond Abbey. According to the legend he was a deacon and in the picture he is identifiable by the colourful cope he is wearing - the rest of Willibrord's followers are characterized as Benedictine monks. Behind Adalbert a heavenly ray of light is seen, going in the direction of a building on the horizon which, by its silhouette, can be recognized as Egmond Abbey, partly destroyed by the sea beggars in 1573 (figs. 9, 10). This building and the nearby well which had formed at Adalberts grave were also visited by pilgrims from all over the Republic. An even greater attraction for pilgrims coming to Heiloo was the site known as Our Lady of Solace (Onze Lieve Vrouw ter Nood) in the hamlet of Oesdom. It consisted of the ruins of a chapel that used to house a miraculous statue of Mary. The chapel had been partially torn down by the protestants in 1573 and the miraculous statue disappeared as well, but these misfortunes made the place only more holy to the catholics living in the protestant country. There were also new miracles: in a picture of a family on pilgrimage from 1630 an apparition of the Virgin is vaguely indicated in the walls of the ruin, in a pose reminiscent of the apparition of the Virgin in our altarpiece (figs. 12, 13). It was not only in this painting that the three abovementioned sites were united - a printed map dated 1704, entitled 'Hyloo-er ryskaartje' ('Heiloo travel map') was specifically produced to show pilgrims the way to the sanctuaries of Willibrord, Adalbert and Mary (fig. 15). The complicated iconography of this altarpiece can thus be explained as an attempt by the dominican friars administering the Heiloo parish, to merge the specific devotions of their order with local devotions connected to nearby pilgrimage sites. The pilgrimage theme is reinforced by the relief figure of a pilgrim above the central column (fig. 17).

Feeling Persecuted: Christians, Jews, and Images of Violence in the Middle Ages

Feeling Persecuted: Christians, Jews, and Images of Violence in the Middle Ages

David Jones's Blessed Rage for Order: The "Will Toward Shape"

I And when they filled, He said to His disciples: Gather up fragments that remain, lest they be lost. JOHN 6:12 Man is unavoidably a sacramentalist and his works are sacramental in character. ... notion of sign implies sacred. DAVID JOHNS, Art and Sacrament All must be integrated, all are necessary to completion of whole as dictionary defines it, but what is that whole? DAVID JOHNS, Art in Relation to War THIS ARTICLE CONSIDERS THE RELATIONSHIP between unity and diversity in sacramental aesthetic of David Jones. In exploring difference between artistic and technocratic and ideological forms of as Jones represents them, it sets Jones's artistic quest for sacramental presence and analogical unity-in-diversity in conversation William F. Lynch's theory of analogical imagination, Catherine Pickstock's exploration of open mystery of Eucharist, and David Tracy's theology of analogy and fragment. fruits of conversation are then brought to a consideration of Jones's The Wall, The Tribune's Visitation, and The Tutelar of Place, to suggest that Jones's toward shape--consciously fragmented--struggles to participate analogically in what Pickstock calls the aporetic impossibility of liturgy, of signs that offers a perennial challenge to the will toward power and univocal orders (the totalisms) of empire and modernity. In second section of In Parenthesis, his shape in words set during First World War, David Jones brings us into enclosed barn where, on wet days, soldiers were given lectures. (1) barn with its great roof, sprung, upreaching, humane, and of a is suggestive--through a range of signification typical of Jones--of a church (upreaching in its architectural sweep) and of barn of Bethlehem; but homely, intimate space is thrown into ironic relief by Bombing Officer told them lightly of efficacy of his and who predicts an for new Mk. IV grenade, just on market. efficaciousness and important future of supremely invention of Mr. Mills are implicitly contrasted (and ironically evocative of) efficaciousness of absent Christ child and his supremely satisfactory and important future work of redemption (as well as, not insignificantly, his work as a carpenter). soldiers, meanwhile, are unwilling shepherds (or animals) come to worship at crib of modernity. internal rhyme of trade grenade amplifies irony of scene, and sharpens distinction, as Jones understood it, between works that marry and gratuitous (like barn itself, redolent of and sacramentally pointing to something other) and those dead works that are merely utile and whose utility, in case, destroys humane. (2) We are reminded in these lines that what Jones regarded as older sacramental reality belongs to a vanished order, dispersed by new unlovely (3) of modernity--the new leviathan (4)--that reaches its apotheosis (or nadir) in what Conor Cunningham has called the abstract indiscriminate logic of bombs. (5) Toward end of same section of poem, older order (represented by small, intimate details) is held in tension new (represented by a bomb), at very moment of symbolic transition from old to new dispensation, as imminent descending bomb evacuates contents of mess-tin (called the bloody thing in which soldiers carry this day's bread) (6) onto (altar) stones, where soldier stands alone as sacrificial offering: exact disposition of small things--the precise shapes of trees, tilt of a bucket, movement of a straw, disappearing right boot of Sergeant Snell--all minute noises, separate and distinct, in a stillness charged through some approaching violence--registered not by ear nor any single faculty--an on-rushing pervasion, saturating all existence; exactitude, logarithmic, dial-timed, millesimal--of calculated velocity, some mean chemist's contrivance, a stinking physicist's destroying toy. …

Boys Will Be Boys: The Physiology of Childhood and the Apocryphal Christ Child in the Later Middle Ages

Intellectuals’ thinking about the nature of children in the high and late Middle Ages may have influenced the reception of centuries-old apocryphal infancy legends that portray Jesus acting like a real human child. As human beings undergoing physical and psychological development, children were thought to be emotionally unstable and rambunctious. While apocryphal portrayals of the boy Jesus may be compared to new naturalistic images of a smiling and playful Christ Child, they are also linked with the traditional iconography of Jesus as a stern little God. The divine child of the apocrypha who, besides engaging in play, displays his wisdom and power on numerous occasions and often causes the deaths of those around him clearly differs from the sentimental Child of late medieval devotional culture, who inspires affection and pathos.

Jesus and the Birds in Medieval Abrahamic Traditions

As is well known, the three “Peoples of the Book” have in common versions of the tale of Abraham: the “Father of Faith,” who, in return for his willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac, was promised descendants as numerous as the stars (Exod. 32:13; cf. Qur'an 2:131–33).1 It is less well known that, in the Middle Ages, the three religions shared versions of a legend about Jesus dating from late antiquity: the tale that Jesus once brought clay birds to life.2 The locus classicus for this legend, which is not found in the New Testament, is the Infancy Gospel of Thomas (hereafter IGT), an apocryphal text that focuses on the childhood of Christ, particularly his amazing deeds and words. This text is believed to have been composed in Greek in the second century, though it circulated in many languages and was variously appropriated in the late-antique and medieval periods.3 An examination of the motif of Jesus bringing clay birds to life reveals the complex transmission history of the IGT and its derivatives, in both East and West, over the course of many centuries.4 More broadly, this story about the legendary Christ Child (an adult in the Jewish version, actually) and his command over the animal kingdom specifically shows the different faiths' understanding of the source and extent of Jesus's power and suggests a reaction to one or both of the other groups. The appropriation of the legend in each case tells us something about each faith's convictions about the way God's power could work in Jesus, and something about how each group viewed Jesus's childhood.

Jesus and the Birds in Medieval Abrahamic Traditions

As is well known, the three “Peoples of the Book” have in common versions of the tale of Abraham: the “Father of Faith,” who, in return for his willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac, was promised descendants as numerous as the stars (Exod. 32:13; cf. Qur'an 2:131–33).1It is less well known that, in the Middle Ages, the three religions shared versions of a legend about Jesus dating from late antiquity: the tale that Jesus once brought clay birds to life.2Thelocus classicusfor this legend, which is not found in the New Testament, is theInfancy Gospel of Thomas(hereafter IGT), an apocryphal text that focuses on the childhood of Christ, particularly his amazing deeds and words. This text is believed to have been composed in Greek in the second century, though it circulated in many languages and was variously appropriated in the late-antique and medieval periods.3An examination of the motif of Jesus bringing clay birds to life reveals the complex transmission history of the IGT and its derivatives, in both East and West, over the course of many centuries.4More broadly, this story about the legendary Christ Child (an adult in the Jewish version, actually) and his command over the animal kingdom specifically shows the different faiths' understanding of the source and extent of Jesus's power and suggests a reaction to one or both of the other groups. The appropriation of the legend in each case tells us something about each faith's convictions about the way God's power could work in Jesus, and something about how each group viewed Jesus's childhood.

Integrating complementary and alternative medicine: Use of myrrh in wound management

More than 38% of adult Americans use some form of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). Many nurses and other healthcare providers have integrated CAM into their practice. Aromatherapy, a type of CAM, uses essential plant oils that emit strong, pleasant aromas to promote relaxation, healing and an overall sense of well-being. Aromatherapy has been used for centuries in cosmetics, fragrances, embalming, mummification, spiritual relaxation and healing. Several different techniques for the application of essential oils in aromatherapy include inhalation, vaporization, massage, bathing and compresses. Myrrh (Commiphoramyrrha) is an essential oil with a rich history. For instance, myrrh was one of three gifts given to the Christ child in the Bible story of the nativity, and it was also found in the tomb of King Tutankhamun. Amember of the Burseraceae botanical family, myrrh is a native tree or shrub found in tropical climates of Somalia and Ethiopia. When the bark cracks or is cut, a yellowish oleoresin forms. Once dried, it is reddish brown and can undergo steam distillation to produce the essential oil. The use of myrrh for therapeutic purposes is an ancient practice. The 1500 BC Ebers Papyrus identified more than 800 herbal prescriptions; many of thesemixtures containedmyrrh and honey. During biblical times, midwives applied myrrh to the perineum during labor to stretch the uterine wall and protect against infection. Myrrh was used to protect against dry cracked skin in the arid climates and theChinese usedmyrrh forwoundhealingbefore theTangDynasty. Although from limited clinical trials, preliminary evidence suggests that essential oils, such as myrrh, are beneficial in woundmanagement. High levels of sesquiterpenes found in myrrh make it an ideal essential oil for wound healing. Sesquiterpenes, a fundamental class of plant compounds, are found in most essential oils and have antiseptic, anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, antifungal, anti-allergen and antispasmodic properties. Myrrh has been used successfully to treat wounds and ulcers, largely due to its anti-inflammatory

Christmas in July

namely, the Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular and the Park Avenue Christmas Tree Lighting and Carol Sing, I am still thinking about what I experienced at these two events in New York. The ghost of Christmas past still haunts me in July. Residing in the New York metropolitan area does not put those of us who live there beyond the occasional need to play the tourist in our own Big Apple. So when a friend suggested we attend the Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular, I welcomed the opportunity. I had seen the show only once before—some thirty years ago—and it seemed like a good way to begin the holiday season. Radio City Music Hall, part of the Rockefeller Center complex, is a cavernous and opulent theatre seating nearly 6,000 people, a vintage Art Deco masterpiece that opened in 1932. It is furnished with a twin-console “Mighty Wurlitzer” organ of 4,400 pipes, boasts a full orchestra, and features the famous Rockettes with their high-kick dance line. The annual Christmas Spectacular is not as pricey as Broadway, and many working parents can still afford to come to it with their children and flash cameras in tow. The program is an amalgam of pop-culture Christmas scenes: a high-tech animation sequence that gives the audience, bedecked in 3-D eyeglasses, the exhilarating sensation of flying with Santa Claus over the streets of Manhattan; the incredibly synchronized dancing of the Rockettes; a sampling from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker; and a procession of live sheep and camels moving on stage silently and deliberately to Bethlehem. The show builds to a climactic “living nativity” as majestically garbed wise men bow before the Holy Family and offer their gifts to the Christ child. Then the entire audience joins the cast in singing “Joy to the World.” It’s all here American style: a ninety-minute celebration seamlessly combining holiday chutzpuh, sexy chorus girls, Santa Claus, and the infant Savior in a nostalgic setting Theology Today editorial

The depiction of the Virgin with the Christ in a niche on the western façade of the Church of the Transfiguration in Novgorod and the question of the painter's origin

The paper deals with a presentation of the Virgin with the Christ Child, in the niche above the archivolt of the western portal of the Church of the Transfiguration, in Novgorod. The fresco is assumed to have belonged to the painted ensemble in the church narthex, none of which has survived. It is also believed that like Theophanes the Greek, who headed the group painting the naos in the church, the zographos who worked on the decoration of the narthex, had arrived from Constantinople.

Empathy and Performative Vision in Oxford Corpus Christi College MS 410

An extensively illustrated manuscript copy of the Meditationes Vitae Christi, MS 410, made c. 1350 in Rome, prescribes a performative experience of the life of Christ deeply connected to Franciscan ideas about the redemptive power of the devotional imagination. Several motifs that are unique to MS 410 or very rare include the depiction of a nude Christ Child in the manger reaching towards the ox at the manger of the Nativity, an image of women performing his Circumcision, and an emphasis on the clothing and disrobing of Christ during the Passion. Women are also prominent actors in the scenes of Christ’s ministry. These iconographic eccentricities can be linked to Franciscan devotion and to female Franciscan spirituality in particular.

Christmas in the Missions of Northern New Spain

In 1982, native historian Joe Sando vividly described the Christmas season at Jémez Pueblo in northern New Mexico. Throughout the pueblo, figures of the Christ Child lay on display in homes in prominent, specially-decorated areas representing the stable in Bethlehem. During his childhood, Sando remembered that Hemish families roasted corn in their fireplaces, while elders drew pictures of wild game animals and birds, as well as important crops, on the wall next to the fireplace, in hopes that the birth of Christ would also result in the birth of the animals and plants drawn on the wall. In Jémez today, although the roasting of corn and drawings on the fireplace walls have been replaced by the exchange of gifts and watching television, some seasonal customs continue. Pine logs for communal bonfires rest neatly in square piles in front of each home. Christmas Eve bonfires attract the newborn Infant Jesus, and children gleefully play and dance around them. When the fires die out, the Hemish return to their homes to await midnight mass. After mass at the church, worshipers follow the newborn Infant in procession through the community. The next morning, as the first rays of daylight become visible in the east, animal dancers appear on the hilly skyline to the east and southwest. By the time the sun leaves the eastern horizon, the animals have arrived in the village, gathering in front of the drummers, who sing welcoming songs. The people arrive to welcome the animals, who process to the plaza, where they dance all day.

Christmas in the Missions of Northern New Spain

In 1982, native historian Joe Sando vividly described the Christmas season at Jémez Pueblo in northern New Mexico. Throughout the pueblo, figures of the Christ Child lay on display in homes in prominent, specially-decorated areas representing the stable in Bethlehem. During his childhood, Sando remembered that Hemish families roasted corn in their fireplaces, while elders drew pictures of wild game animals and birds, as well as important crops, on the wall next to the fireplace, in hopes that the birth of Christ would also result in the birth of the animals and plants drawn on the wall. In Jémez today, although the roasting of corn and drawings on the fireplace walls have been replaced by the exchange of gifts and watching television, some seasonal customs continue. Pine logs for communal bonfires rest neatly in square piles in front of each home. Christmas Eve bonfires attract the newborn Infant Jesus, and children gleefully play and dance around them. When the fires die out, the Hemish return to their homes to await midnight mass. After mass at the church, worshipers follow the newborn Infant in procession through the community. The next morning, as the first rays of daylight become visible in the east, animal dancers appear on the hilly skyline to the east and southwest. By the time the sun leaves the eastern horizon, the animals have arrived in the village, gathering in front of the drummers, who sing welcoming songs. The people arrive to welcome the animals, who process to the plaza, where they dance all day.

Obesity in Aging and Art

Obesity in Aging and Art

“Whom seek ye, sirs?”: The Logic of Searching in the York Herod and the Magi

“Whom seek ye, sirs?”: The Logic of Searching in the York Herod and the Magi Nicole R. Rice (bio) The search for Jesus has been fundamental to Christian performance since the development of the quem queritis (“whom do you seek?”) trope in monastic liturgical ritual. This phrase appears in the earliest Visitatio Sepulchri ceremony for Easter and also in Christmas liturgies featuring the adoration of the shepherds and the visit of the magi. In one especially elaborate example, in the Fleury monastery’s Ordo ad representandum Herodem (Service for Representing Herod), the shepherds are asked, “Quem queritis, pastores, dicite?”1 Later in the text, monks singing the parts of the magi reveal that they too are seekers: “Regem regum quaerimus, / quem natum esse stella indicat, / quae fulgore ceteris clarior rutilat” (We seek the king of kings, / Whose birth the star reveals / Which radiates with more shining splendor than the rest; ll. 21–23).2 The magi follow the star to the manger, where an angel displays the Christ child: “Ecce puer adest quem quaeritis” (Behold, here is the boy whom you seek; l. 94). Whether this performance text is viewed strictly as ritual or as a protodrama, it is clearly structured by the logic of seeking, as the star generates the search and leads the magi forward to find what they have sought.3 The action of seeking Christ is likewise central to the York Corpus Christi play, the only complete civic cycle drama to survive from fifteenth-century England. A massive devotional performance produced by craft workers’ groups, the cycle engages simultaneously with traditional religious representations and with late medieval York’s complex labor system. York’s Herod and the Magi pageant, in dramatizing the familiar search for Christ in a very particular way, also meditates upon artisanal [End Page 89] rules and regulations to suggest ways in which the city’s system of labor inspections might work to promote a more inclusive “social body.”4 The pageant’s representations of the magi’s journey, their interactions with Herod, each other, and with the Christ child, enact concerns particular to the civic context in which these plays were composed and performed, a context that offered many opportunities for what Sarah Beckwith has called the “theatrical exploration of labour and its divisions, transformations, praxis, and political regulation.”5 This drama turns, as do all magi plays, on the action of spiritual seeking.6 But the particular visitations depicted in this pageant may also be seen to evoke craft searching, the inspection of workshops by guild officers (searchers) for violations of craft standards or infringement of craft monopolies, punishable by fines that contributed in part to financing the city’s dramatic cycle. Though it was a government-mandated form of inspection widely acknowledged as potentially abusive of fellow craftworkers, searching was equally a process of discovery predicated on the desire for peaceful coexistence among guilds. The practice was scrutinized by the guilds themselves and understood as a means of defining each craft’s interests among other workers, making even minor craft groups visible as participants in the wider urban economy. If we read the magi’s spiritual search for Christ as informed by the practicalities of guild searching, the interconnections of religious drama and social life are illuminated in a new way, as artisanal drama comments upon the possibilities for civic unity that inhere in a labor practice that contributed materially to bringing forth the play every year. The feast of Corpus Christi, inaugurated in the thirteenth century to celebrate the real presence of Christ in the eucharistic host, quickly became a prime occasion for civic and religious discourses to mingle in public performance.7 While Mervyn James influentially interpreted the craft-produced Corpus Christi drama as functioning to display the various artisan guilds as unified in a single “social body,”8 more recent materialist work has uncovered the ways in which guild-produced drama also evokes the competing interests of different city dwellers: mayors and aldermen, wealthier and poorer guilds, apprentices and masters. Although, Beckwith argues, the York cycle was designed “to figure forth the body of the city as the wish-fulfillment of its most illustrious members,” she contends...

Lodestone: Following the Emly Shrine

On Sunday mornings, my mother would go to Mass at St. Catherine's in down town Norwood on her own, leaving my father, my two-year-old brother Geof frey, and me; I was four. Making things out of clay was one of our favorite activ ities. I recall that we began with whales, my father's inspiration: shaping hefty chunks of gray or brown clay, smoothing the flanks, sculpting out the mouth and tail, drilling the blowhole with a pencil as a finishing flourish: it just felt great. I began to move on to more ambitious modeling projects of my own, using packets of in bright primary colors from the five-and-ten store. When I went off to first grade at age five in September 1948, clay model ing became my ticket to extra notice and praise. At Christmastime, I brought in a freshly minted manger scene, with Mary, Joseph, and the Christ Child sur rounded by animals in a shoe box tableau. My classmates were intrigued. More important, the teacher, Miss Cataldo?on whom all the boys had a crush?was impressed. She invited the second graders in to look, and my reputation as an artist was established. My clay models of buildings, rooms, scenes from history and literature grew more and more elaborate as I got older. The highlights of my plasticine career included the Parthenon to scale with Phidias' lost statue of Athena recovered and reinstalled inside, the Egyptian temple of Karnak, nine feet long and sup ported by columns decorated with hieroglyphics, and a two-storey medieval castle with twelve rooms, including an armory, throne room, and chapel, a banquet hall with food on the table, and exterior walls molded stone by stone. In sixth grade came my piece de resistance: the Coliseum at Rome, which ended up on display in the children's room of the public library in Norwood. Mount ed on a square of plywood, my coliseum was nearly a foot high and three feet in diameter. In a photograph I still have, I count twenty statue-crowned columns and more than three hundred separate figures. In the end, these early art projects would dramatically expand my world. Recognizing artistic potential in my clay models, my sixth-grade teacher and first mentor, Mr. Francis Lambert, had gone out of his way to find me a schol arship to the weekly community classes for children at the Museum of Fine Arts

The diptych icon from Kotor: Imago pietatis and the Virgin with the Christ Child: In the light of the religious practice of the brotherhood of the flagellants

The diptych icon from Kotor (Imago pietatis and the Virgin with the Christ Child), painted probably in 1468, is examined from the aspect of the penitent and ascetic practice of the Kotor flagellants, who commissioned it for their needs. The members of the brotherhood of the Holy Cross particularly revered the cult of the Five Wounds of Christ, the particles of the lignum crucis and the experience of Christ's Passion. The said religious themes are analysed based on the archive material and preserved paintings, connected with this monastic brotherhood of Kotor.

Back to the Future: The Eschatological Vision of Advent

The cyclical nature of the church's timekeeping means that the sacred story begins anew at Advent, inviting the church to place the coming of the Christ child in a cosmic context in which even time is redefined by God's anticipated in-breaking into the world. Advent is the season of new beginnings and new hopes in its anticipation of the dawning of God's new age.

Christmas out of season: who is Kris Kringle and what has he wrought?

Santa Claus is sometimes referred to as Kris Kringle, a name most likely derived from Christ Kindel (Christ-child). The German name of the Christ Child is Christkind, commonly used in its diminutive form Christkindel. The Dutch– German protestant reform movement brought in the idea that the Christchild should be the standard bearer for Christmas. Traditionally, an image used for his messenger was a young child with a golden crown who holds a tiny “Tree of Light” and brings the gifts of the Christ Child. We currently enjoy July, not Christmas. However, could it be that Kringle has brought us a present out of season? Wound repair, regeneration of ischemic tissues, and the new discipline of “tissue engineering” all require improved vascularization of the regenerating tissues. Recent advances in understanding the process of blood vessel growth have offered significant tools for therapeutic neovascularization [1]. Several angiogenic growth factors including vascular endothelial cell growth factor (VEGF) and basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) have been used for the vascularization of regenerating and ischemic tissues in animal models. Three approaches have been used for vascularization of bioengineered tissue: incorporation of angiogenic factors in the bioengineered tissue, seeding endothelial cells with other cell types, and prevascularization of matrices prior to cell seeding [1]. One approach is to rationally design matrices that provide specific adhesion molecules such as a receptor for alpha v beta 3-integrin expressed on angiogenic endothelial cells that are able to store and release angiogenic growth factors such as bFGF that target cell type-specific responses [2]. Moreover, these matrices can be modified to release complexed plasmid DNA or other molecules that transfect surrounding cells and improve angiogenesis. During wound healing, cells infiltrate into the scaffold and degrade it, thereby releasing entrapped growth factors. The scaffold is completely removed when tissue healing is achieved. In this issue, Zhao et al. [3] demonstrate improved neovascularization and wound repair by targeting human bFGF to fibrin. bFGF is a potent mitogen for numerous cell types of mesodermal origin including fibroblasts, vascular endothelial cells, and vascular smooth muscle cells and therefore holds great promise as an agent to promote wound healing. bFGF can be produced recombinantly and therefore should be readily available therapeutically. The problem resides in bFGF delivery. Exogenous bolus injection seems to work as studies involving the heart and ischemic limb have shown. However, the bFGF diffuses rapidly from the injection site and bFGF delivery with a sustained site-targeting result has been elusive. Zhao et al.[3] fused bFGF to a kringle repeat in the plasminogen molecule termed kringle 1 (K1). They thereby constructed a fusion protein (K1-bFGF) that has a high tendency to bind to fibrin. Plasma clots of course develop at the sites of wound injury. However, the authors also developed a fibrin-scaffold/K1-bFGF construct. This system successfully induced neovascularization by delivering K1-bFGF in a sustained fashion. The result was a microenvironment that promoted cell growth, angiogenesis, and tissue regeneration. J Mol Med (2008) 86:1081–1083 DOI 10.1007/s00109-008-0389-0

The diagnosis of art: Albrecht Dürer and the Christ Child's drooped shoulder

Albrecht Durer (1471-1528) was perhaps the greatest exponent of the Northern European Renaissance, known for his painting, printmaking and engraving, and his books on perspective and anatomy. The son of a goldsmith, Durer was trained as a metalworker at a young age and applied the meticulous methods that he learned to his woodcuts and engravings, notably the Four Horsemen of his Apocalypse series (1498), and his Knight, Death and the Devil (1513). Following two visits to Venice, in 1494/1495 and 1505/1507, he became acquainted with Giovanni Bellini, whose influence is evident in the Madonna and Child (Figure 1). The athleticism of the Christ Child, the Virgin's pyramidal form, the sculpture-like modelling of the figures, and the contrast of Mary's dark blue robes against red drapes all recall Bellini's treatment of the same subject. Further analysis reveals the complexity of the panel's composition. The Madonna and Child adopts Netherlandish concepts of devotional images in portraying the corner of a room with a window open on a distant view. Jesus' squirming posture and the attention to surfaces and textures are typically German. The coat of arms in the lower left corner is that of the wealthy Nuremberg mercantile family of Haller von Hallerstein, patrons and friends of the artist.1 Figure 1 Madonna and Child C. 1496/1499; oil on panel, 52.4 × 42.2 cm; Samuel H Kress Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, USA [In colour online.] In the painting, the Christ Child holds his apple in exactly the same position as Eve holds hers in Durer's engraving of Adam and Eve (Figure 2), implying that this is the forbidden fruit that brought disaster on humanity, which he has been born to redeem.2 Figure 2 Adam and Eve 1504; engraving, 25.2 × 19.4 cm, Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe, Germany [In colour online.] There are alternative medical explanations for the abnormal posture. For example, the infant depicted in this painting may have suffered from Erb's palsy (a form of neonatal brachial plexopathy), the left upper limb being held in the typical ‘waiter's tip’ posture.3,4 There is internal rotation and pronation of the left upper limb with accentuation of the skin folds of the anterior axillary region, along with drooping of the left shoulder. Although Erb's palsy is a possibility, further differential diagnoses for this abnormal posture are worth entertaining, including amyoplasia congenita, anterior horn cell lesions, hereditary brachial plexus neuropathy and pseudoparalysis. Amyoplasia congenita, a form of arthrogryposis, is characterized by bilateral upper limb involvement along with congenital contractures and micro-gnathia. Central nervous system lesions of the anterior horn cells, such as congenital spinal atrophy and congenital varicella syndrome, present with generalized hypotonia, in contrast to the more common presentation of unilateral weakness or paralysis seen in brachial plexus injuries. Congenital varicella is also differentiated by the presence of skin scarring and finger amputations. Hereditary paediatric brachial plexus neuropathy is an autosomal dominant disorder that presents with shoulder and arm weakness, pain and atrophy. It is differentiated from brachial plexus injuries by its episodic nature and its tendency to present after the neonatal period, most often in the teenage years. Pseudoparalysis from a fractured clavicle or humerus causes limited movement, because of pain, and clinically can look like a neonatal brachial plexopathy. Indeed, on closer inspection of the painting (Figure 3), there is a lump (visible as a dark shadow) arising from the left clavicle of the child just above the Madonna's left thumb, consistent with a clavicular fracture. Pseudoparesis is therefore the most likely diagnosis for the abnormal left upper limb posture seen in the painting, although clavicular fractures can co-exist with neonatal brachial plexopathies in about 10% of neonates.5 Figure 3 Detail from Madonna and Child [In colour online.] On the whole, however, we prefer the metaphorical interpretation.