In the Bernward Gospels, these metaphors for Mary are structured as Gabriel’s salutation to the annunciate Virgin and thus emphasize her role as the bodily host for Christ’s Incarnation. Yet the inscriptions do more than simply reiterate conventional titles for Mary. They also draw attention to the realization of these epithets in material form by means of their representation as a series of pictured things: a crown, textile, building, and doors. Together, the ways in which the composition connects the two halves of the opening to each other, the miniature’s combination of donor imagery and Eucharistic content and the right folio’s pictorial rendering of the tituli’s verbal metaphors, establish a complicated mechanism of dynamic play between word and image, picture and ritual, visible and invisible.
By prompting the viewer to engage with this process, the painting cues a series of cognitive responses in which the crown, curtain, and doors are suddenly revealed as both objects and allegories for Mary, while the representation of Mary herself becomes both a portrait of the saint and an image of a cult statue. In the dedicatory opening the Virgin and Christ are characterized by a frontal pose, speaking gesture, and metallic clothing. A very small Christ floats in an upright posture on the edge of Mary’s lap. Both figures have been depicted in a highly symmetrical manner, but certain details add a touch of liveliness. For example, the knees and feet of both figures splay outward rather than mirroring each other exactly. Mary and Christ also both open their right hands, gesturing toward the side. These formal aspects, along with the gold and silver drapery over Mary and Christ’s bodies (including the cowl that descends over Mary’s shoulders), closely reflect the appearance of a contemporary sculpture that is an early example of the so-called Throne of Wisdom type (fig. 7). Still extant in Hildesheim’s cathedral, it is a statue with which the Bernward Gospels artist was likely to be familiar. This sculpture was made under the bishop’s direction in the early eleventh century, and in Bernward’s time it consisted of a wooden core covered in gilded silver, echoed in the painting by Christ’s and Mary’s gold and silver vestments.24 It is probable that the statue, like the Virgin in the miniature, originally wore a crown. According to historical sources in Hildesheim, a “new” crown was made for the statue in 1645, suggesting that it may have already worn one before then, and a crown is already associated in the eleventh century with the oldest extant Marian statue, a tenth-century sculpture from the royal nunnery of Essen.25
The materials in which Mary and Christ are rendered are especially significant to considering whether the dedication painting represents a statue. Compared to other depictions of figures in the manuscript, including what is conceptually the closest parallel, a painting of Christ in Majesty (fol. 174r; plate 14), the complete covering of Mary in gold and silver makes her figure read as a metallic object. In the dedication painting, that combination of materials is reserved for the objects around the altar, set pieces of the architecture, and two of the inscriptions. What these elements have in common is their representation as manufactured things.26 Even the inscriptions, with their carefully delineated silver capitals laid on a gold ground, resemble engraved letters such as those that appear on the back cover of the Bernward Gospels (plate 18).
It is probable that the depiction of Mary does not merely act as a general sign for a cult statue but instead depicts the particular sculpture made under the direction of the manuscript’s patron, Bishop Bernward. Artistic copying in the Middle Ages varied in its levels of specificity and verisimilitude, usually indexing what were considered to be significant parts of the model in order to indicate a relationship between model and copy.27 The picture of a sculpture accompanying its written description in a codex now in Clermont-Ferrand (Clermont-Ferrand, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 145) illustrates this point. Inserted into a book primarily devoted to the works of Gregory of Tours is the description of a Madonna and Child statue commissioned by Bishop Stephen of Clermont-Ferrand in 947. The text includes an account of the statue’s history, including the recitation of a vision that had justified its making. In the margin appears an ink drawing of that very sculpture (fol. 130v; fig. 8). Although its iconography follows the description of the statue to some extent, the sketch portrays the Virgin in profile (as if part of an Adoration picture) and includes a halo, which was certainly not a feature of the Clermont-Ferrand sculpture.28 The drawing in this instance thus reflects only some aspects of the statue’s appearance, and it is primarily the text that confirms the relationship between the drawing and an actual object.
Such an approach to copying is broadly consistent with medieval conventions for representing artworks not only in images but also in texts.29 In the early Middle Ages, descriptions of artworks appear sporadically in narrative sources and frequently in property inventories. An example especially relevant to Hildesheim is an Ottonian account of a series of reliquaries that may have been written either at a monastery in Lamspringe, near Hildesheim, or in Hildesheim’s cathedral (Wolfenbüttel, HAB, 427 Helmstedt, fol. 2r).30 The text provides a useful case study of early medieval descriptive conventions for artworks: “This [relic] is contained in a glass case.... This is contained in a case, the cover of which is carved with the lamb of God.... These are contained in a case that is painted with a green color.... These are contained in an oblong case with red paint without so much viredine.... These are contained in a case that on the cover presents the likeness of the throne of the Lord.”31 This laconic inventory describes the reliquaries only sparsely, yet identifies select distinctive details to help distinguish individual examples within a single corpus. In the first instance, the list mentions the case’s material. In two separate examples, the text cites the color of the object and provides a brief explanation of the picture visible on the casket’s lid.
Such lack of specificity suggests that the writer of the inventory assumed his readers would have independent knowledge of the treasury.32 In this circumstance, the description would serve essentially as a mnemonic cue for something already familiar. Indeed, the text’s careful delineation of distinguishing characteristics within a more generic description relates directly to how medieval audiences learned to remember things.33 Rhetorical and meditative treatises that lay the basis for how medieval authors described mnemonic processes emphasize the forming of mental pictures as an aid to memory.34 In these texts, images are considered effective for remembering if they evoke something known by fixing minimal distinctive details in the mind—such as, in the descriptions discussed above, the material or color of an object, or, in the Bernward Gospels painting, the figures’ pose together with their gold and silver robes. To make the visualization even more memorable, the image could be elaborated by invention.35 That is, medieval systems of memory relied not on mimesis but rather on creative mental indexing. Read against such practices, the painted statue in the Bernward Gospels reproduces the appearance of Bernward’s sculpture with surprising fidelity. In this connection, the high level of verisimilitude in the reproduction of the Marian statue in the Bernward Gospels is significant.36
Why engage the memory of a golden cult object donated by the bishop to the Cathedral of Hildesheim