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~ An exploration of saints, their relics, and their iconography in art

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Saint Corona and Saint Rosalia: Two Saints Invoked Against Pandemics

29 Sunday Mar 2020

Posted by Reliquarian in Art History, Metal Reliquary, Painting, Reliquary, Sculpture

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Aachen, coronavirus, Germany, Italy, martyr, Palermo, pandemic, plague, Saint Corona, Saint Edmund, Saint Roch, Saint Rosalia, Saint Victor, shrine

71.41

Anthony van Dyck, Saint Rosalie Interceding for the Plague-stricken of Palermo, oil on canvas (1624).  Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.  Photo via the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The Great Plague, or Black Death, of the 14th century was one of the most lethal pandemics in human history.  The plague was believed to have entered Europe from the Crimean port of Kaffa (modern-day Feodosia) in 1346.[1]  From there, it spread to Constantinople, Sicily, Genoa, and Provence before infiltrating the rest of the continent.  The Shorter Cambridge Medieval History describes its initial progress as “like the advance of a prairie fire, destroying and inescapable.”[2]  Dispersed along well-worn trade routes, the Black Death killed nearly one-third of Europe’s population between 1347 and 1352—an estimated 25 million people.[3]  In his book The Great Transition, Bruce Campbell observes that “[b]oth proportionately and absolutely it therefore probably ranks as the single greatest public health crisis in recorded European history.”[4]

The tragedy of the plague, however, did not conclude with this initial wave of fatalities.  The plague endured for another three hundred years, returning approximately every ten years to ravage European society anew.[5]  Dread of the plague manifested itself in a number of ways.  In art, for example, the danse macabre became a popular motif.  In these scenes personifications of death, frequently in the form of jaunty skeletons, escorted individuals from all stations in life to their graves.  In religion, special saints were invoked for their protection against the Black Death.  Chief among these were Saint Roch and Saint Edmund.  Saint Roch was often shown pointing at a bubo (a wound caused by the bubonic plague) in his leg and accompanied by a dog carrying a piece of bread.  Meanwhile, Saint Edmund, who was King of East Anglia, is frequently portrayed with a crown, an orb, a scepter, or arrows (his death involved a volley of arrows).  Other saints, however, were also believed to protect against pandemics and the plague.  The COVID-19 outbreak has renewed interest of some of these saints, two of whom are described below.

IMG_3553

Christian Jorhan, Heilige Rochus (Saint Roch) (detail), polychromed limewood (1760/1770).  Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremburg, Germany.  In this detail, Saint Roch points at a wound caused by bubonic plague clearly evident in his leg.  Photo by Reliquarian.

Saint Corona – Patron Saint of Lumberjacks . . . and Epidemics?

Saint Corona is believed to have been martyred in the second or third century in particularly gruesome fashion.  Tied between two bent palm trees, she was torn apart when the two trees were released.[6]  She later became a patron saint of lumberjacks.[7]  In 997, King Otto III translated Saint Corona’s relics to Aachen Cathedral where the relics remained, buried beneath a slab of stone in the cathedral’s floor, until the early 20th century.[8]  Around 1912, the relics were transferred to a reliquary shrine created by the famous Aachen goldsmith Bernhard Witte.[9]

Saint Corona

Master of the Palazzo Venezia Madonna, Saint Corona, tempera and gold on panel (c. 1350).  National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen, Denmark.  Note the crown she holds in her left hand and the two palm leaves she holds in her right.  Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Experts from the cathedral’s treasury had been working to restore Saint Corona’s reliquary in preparation for an exhibition on goldsmithery when the novel coronavirus emerged last year.[10]  The pandemic has lent new relevance to Saint Corona, whom cathedral officials allege is also a protector against infectious diseases.  Some scholars, however, question Saint Corona’s historical association with pandemics and infectious diseases.[11]  Regardless, her name alone has earned her an inescapable connection with the COVID-19 outbreak.  Notably, the names of the saint and the coronavirus share the same Latin root, corona, which means crown.

Coronaviruses derive their name from the protein spikes that protrude from their surfaces; when viewed under a microscope, these spikes give the appearance of a crown.  Saint Corona’s name relates to a vision of crowns she had near the time of her death.  According to legend, Saint Corona comforted a Roman soldier—the future Saint Victor—who was being tortured for his faith.  The Roman Martyrology states, “As Corona . . . was proclaiming him happy for his fortitude in his sufferings, she saw two crowns falling from heaven, one for Victor, the other for herself.  She related this to all present and was torn to pieces between two trees; Victor was beheaded.”[12]  Saint Corona’s feast day is 14 May.

Aachen Cathedral - High Altar

High Altar of Aachen Cathedral, Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle), Germany.  The relics of Saint Corona were interred beneath a black stone slab to the left of the high altar in 997.  The relics were later transferred to a golden reliquary designed by Bernhard Witte in the early 20th century.  Photo by Reliquarian.

Saint Rosalia – Protector Against the Plague

Another saint associated with pandemics has also been in the news lately.  On the eve of an exhibition celebrating its 150th anniversary, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has been forced to close its doors to the public due to the coronavirus pandemic.  A centerpiece of its anniversary exhibition, “Making the Met: 1870-2020,” was to be a painting by Anthony van Dyck titled “Saint Rosalie Interceding for the Plague-stricken of Palermo.”[13]

The painting, one of the first acquired by the museum after its founding, depicts Saint Rosalia ascending to heaven accompanied by a tumbled passel of cherubim.[14]  An article by Jason Farago in the New York Times notes that at first glance, the work could easily be confused for an Assumption of the Virgin due to the lack of visual clues clearly identifying its central figure as Rosalia rather than the Virgin Mary.[15]  Farago writes, “Unlike Peter with his keys or Catherine with her wheel, this little-known saint did not have a set of standard attributes until the plague struck.”[16]  The plague referenced was an outbreak of bubonic plague that beset Palermo in 1624.

Upon closer inspection, van Dyck’s painting does offer some clues to the saint’s identity.  Farago suggests van Dyck had to invent an iconography to identify Saint Rosalia, who was credited with ending the 1624 flare-up.[17]  One cherub, for example, bears a wreath of pink and white roses which it is preparing to place on Saint Rosalia’s head.  The roses are a reference to the saint’s name “Rosalia.”  Another cherub holds a more macabre emblem of the saint:  an umber brown cranium which the cherub grasps casually in its left hand.  The skull is Saint Rosalia’s, a reference to the saint’s relics, which were unearthed near Palermo during the outbreak of plague in the city.[18]

71.41

Anthony van Dyck, Saint Rosalie Interceding for the Plague-stricken of Palermo (detail), oil on canvas (1624).  Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.  Photo via the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

According to legend, a local Palmeritan woman was healed of the plague after praying fervently to Saint Rosalia.[19]  Later, the saint revealed the location of her bones to the woman in a dream.[20]  The bones were subsequently discovered in a cave on Mount Pellegrino near Palermo.[21]  Hagiographies of the saint suggest that Rosalia fled to Mount Pellegrino to avoid a marriage arranged for her by her father and that she changed caverns frequently, guided by an angel, to avoid discovery.[22]  In van Dyck’s painting, Mount Pellegrino is clearly visible in the background, as is the harbor of Palermo.

Today, the Festino di Santa Rosalia, which takes place in July, is one of the largest festivals in Italy.[23]  At present, however, it is still unclear whether the festival will proceed as planned as many Italians remain in quarantine.  Meanwhile, “Saint Rosalie Interceding for the Plague-stricken of Palermo” also remains in quarantine amidst the coronavirus outbreak.  The Metropolitan Museum does not plan to reopen until July at the earliest.[24]


[1]  2 C.W. Previté-Orton, The Shorter Cambridge Medieval History 847 (1952).

[2]  Id.

[3]  Id.; Bruce M. S. Campbell, The Great Transition 307 (2016).

[4]  Id.

[5]  Id., Previté-Orton, supra note 1, at 847.

[6]  “German Cathedral Dusts Off Relics of St Corona, Patron of Epidemics,” Reuters (Mar. 25, 2020), https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-germany-saint-idUSKBN21C2PM.

[7]  Id.

[8]  Id.

[9]  Naomi Rea, “A German Cathedral Plans to Display Its Shrine to Saint Corona, Who It Says Is the Patron Saint of Epidemics,” Artnet (Mar. 27, 2020), https://news.artnet.com/art-world/aachen-cathedral-saint-corona-1817631.

[10]  Id.

[11]  E.g., id.

[12] Catholic Church, The Roman Martyrology 139-40 (revised ed., reprint 1916).

[13]  Jason Farago, “The Saint Who Stopped an Epidemic Is on Lockdown at the Met,” N.Y. Times (Mar. 26, 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/26/arts/design/van-dyck-metropolitan-museum-virus.html.

[14]  Id.

[15]  Id.

[16]  Id.

[17]  Id.

[18]  Id.

[19]  Rosa Giorgi, Saints in Art 323 (Thomas Michael Hartmann trans., Stefano Zuffi ed., 2002).

[20]  Id.

[21]  Id.

[22]  Id.

[23]  Farago, supra note 13.

[24]  Id.

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Relic of the Holy Diaper: The Swaddling Clothes of Jesus

18 Thursday Dec 2014

Posted by Reliquarian in Textile

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Tags

Aachen, Croatia, Dubrovnik, Germany, Magi, Marienschrein, relic, reliquary, Saint Joseph, Saint Mary, swaddling clothes

Giorgione, The Adoration of the Shepherds, oil on panel (1477), National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

Giorgione, The Adoration of the Shepherds, oil on panel (1477), National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

The Swaddling Clothes

One of the more remarkable relics on display in the Reliquary Treasury of Dubrovnik Cathedral is the “diaper” of Jesus.  The relic is displayed in a bulky silver reliquary, profusely ornamented with winged figures, clunky arabesques, and other decorative accents.[1] While most translations into English describe the relic as a “diaper” or “diapers,” it could more accurately be described as the “swaddling cloth” or “swaddling clothes” of Jesus.[2]

Veneration of Jesus’ swaddling clothes is more frequently associated with Aachen, Germany, where a more famous set of swaddling garments has been kept since the 13th century.  Housed in the golden Shrine of Saint Mary (Marienshrein) at Aachen Cathedral, the swaddling clothes (Windel Jesu) were rarely put on public display prior to the 14th century.[3]  Since then, the relic has been exhibited in Aachen approximately every seven years.[4]  In comparison, the swaddling clothes kept at Dubrovnik Cathedral are regularly displayed in the cathedral’s astonishing treasury of saintly relics.

Marienschrein

Marienschrein (Shrine of Saint Mary), gold (1230-1239), Aachen Cathedral, Aachen, Germany

Christmas Stockings

In a paper on Jesus’ swaddling clothes, Sophie Oosterwijk explains that since antiquity, “medical tradition held that the newborn child might develop deformed limbs if left unswaddled; therefore, swaddling clothes were considered absolutely essential not just for ordinary infants but also for the Christ child.”[5] Consequently, until about the 14th century, depictions of the Nativity commonly showed the infant Jesus tightly swaddled, his face serene in a cloth cocoon.[6]

Some paintings of this period, however, show the infant Jesus unswaddled, presumably mere moments after his birth.  According to one tradition, Jesus’ struggling parents were forced to reuse Joseph’s hose, the only extra cloth they had at hand, as makeshift swaddling clothes.[7]  Paintings inspired by this story frequently portray Joseph removing his shoes and stockings or ripping his hose into strips as Mary waits nearby.  “Mary, take my hose and wind your dear baby in them,” Joseph tells Mary in an early 15th century Nativity painting from a church in Lezignan.[8]  In another, Joseph seated on the ground with one bare foot extended, carefully cuts his hose into strips with a knife while a recumbent Mary watches from a mattress.[9]  Rogier van der Weyden’s famous Columba Altarpiece has also been tied to this tradition, though Joseph’s stockings are portrayed more subtly:  two squares of cloth laid in Jesus’ manger have been interpreted as Joseph’s repurposed hose.[10]

Joseph Malouel?, Nativity, oil on tempera (c. 1400), Museum Mayer van den Bergh, Antwerp, Belgium (courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

Joseph Malouel?, Nativity, oil on tempera (c. 1400), Museum Mayer van den Bergh, Antwerp, Belgium (courtesy Wikimedia Commons). Here, Joseph can be seen cutting one of his stockings with a knife as Mary watches and the infant Jesus waits in a manger.

As Oosterwijk observes, the tradition of Joseph and his hose “illustrates the medieval need to explain the details of the Virgin’s reported confinement far away from the comfort of a regular nursery . . . , thus emphasizing Christ’s humility.  Instead, it is Joseph in his role of the family provider, rather than that of a natural father, who finds the solution for the lack of swaddling clothes by donating his own hose to cover the newborn Christ with in the cold winter night.”[11]

Adoration of the Magi (panel detail), Columba Altarpiece, oil on oak (c. 1455), Alte Pinakothek, Munich, Germany.

Adoration of the Magi (panel detail), Columba Altarpiece, oil on oak (c. 1455), Alte Pinakothek, Munich, Germany.  The two squares of cloth padding the manger at left have been interpreted as Joseph’s hose.

God and Man

A curious book titled Excrement in the Late Middle Ages further explores the history and deeper theological meaning of Jesus’ swaddling clothes.  As the author, Susan Signe Morrison, notes, while stories about the baby Jesus’s swaddling clothes may seem “obscene or blasphemous,” they were, in fact, “produced within the confines of the sacred.”[12]  Miracles associated with Jesus’ swaddling clothes were described in the First Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus Christ — a work condemned as heretical in the fifth century — and in stories describing the return of the Wise Men to their home countries.

Returning to the Christmas story as told in Luke 2:12, Morrison explains that Jesus’s swaddling clothes were provided “not just to keep him warm or to bind him in an imitation of the closeness of the womb.”[13]  Rather, “[t]he clothes clearly perform a key function:  to collect the filth the human baby ejects.”[14]  Morrison further explains that the “enfleshing of Christ is both most sacred (he became man to save us) and most profane (he took on the flesh that emits filth for us).”  Morrison concludes, “To be human is to eat; to be fully human, God must digest just as a human does.  As Tertullian argued, by taking on the filthy human body, Christ signals his profound humility and compassion.  God has divested himself of his omnipotence; what more overt way to do this than to become a helpless, wriggling, filthy infant, utterly dependent upon others for nourishment, shelter, and personal hygiene?”[15]

Madonna and Child

Bernardino Luini, The Madonna of the Carnation, oil on panel (c. 1515), National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC


[1]  See, e.g., Ante Dračevac, La Cathedrale de Dubrovnik 50 (Françoise Kveder trans., 1988). Dating to the 16th century, the reliquary is the work of local Dubrovnik metalsmiths.  Id.

[2]  For example, an older guide to the cathedral, translated into French and no longer in print, describes the relic as “des langes de Jésus.”  Id.

[3]  Joan Carroll Cruz, Relics 23 (1984).

[4]  Id.

[5]  Sophie Oosterwijk, The Swaddling-Clothes of Christ:  A Medieval Relic on Display, 13 Medieval Life 25-30 (2000).

[6]  See id. at 25.

[7]  Incidentally, Saint Joseph’s hose is also purportedly stored in the Marienshrein, along with Jesus’ swaddling clothes, the robe of Saint Mary, and the beheading cloth of Saint John the Baptist.  Photographs of all four relics, which comprise the four great relics of the Marienschrein, can be found here.

[8]  Gail McMurray Gibson, “St. Margery:  The Book of Margery Kempe,” in Equally in God’s Image:  Women in the Middle Ages 152 (Julia Bolton Holloway et al., eds., 1990).

[9]  The painting is the Nativity panel of a polyptych by an unknown artist, possibly Jean Malouel, painted c. 1400.

[10]  See, e.g., Oosterwijk, supra note 5, at 28.

[11]  Id.

[12]  Susan Signe Morrison, Excrement in the Late Middle Ages: Sacred Filth and Chaucer’s Fecopoetics 92 (2009).

[13]  Id. at 93.

[14]  Id.

[15]  Id. (internal citations omitted).

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The Marienschrein at Aachen Cathedral: Reliquary of the Cloak of the Virgin Mary

19 Thursday Jun 2014

Posted by Reliquarian in Art History, Metal Reliquary

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Aachen, Chartres, cloak, Germany, Marienschrein, Nuremberg, relic, reliquary, Saint Mary, stained-glass window, textile, Virgin Mary

The Alba Madonna, Rafael, oil on panel transferred to canvas (1510), National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

The Alba Madonna, Rafael, oil on panel transferred to canvas (1510), National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Virgin in a Blue Dress

In his superb book on Christian symbolism, Signs and Symbols in Christian Art, George Ferguson writes, “No other figure, except that of Christ Himself, was so often portrayed in Renaissance art as the Virgin Mary.”[1]  Ferguson further notes that Saint Mary was traditionally painted wearing blue, the color of truth and a symbol of the sky, heaven, and heavenly love.[2]  But did the historical Saint Mary actually wear blue?  Evidence preserved in various shrines suggests the Virgin’s blue wardrobe may have been an invention of Medieval and Renaissance artists.  These artists expressed their devotion to the Virgin by using a very scarce and very expensive pigment to paint her garments.  The pigment, known as ultramarine, was a deep, celestial blue.

Madonna and Child with Saint Jerome and Saint John the Baptist, Cima da Conegliano, oil on panel (1492-1495), National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Madonna and Child with Saint Jerome and Saint John the Baptist, Cima da Conegliano, oil on panel (1492-1495), National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

The Marienschrein and the Four Great Relics of Aachen

The Marienschrein, or Shrine of Saint Mary, at Aachen Cathedral in Aachen (Aix-La-Chapelle), Germany houses four great relics:  the cloak of Saint Mary, the swaddling clothes of the infant Jesus, the beheading cloth of Saint John the Baptist, and the loincloth worn by Jesus at his crucifixion.  The relics were rarely displayed publicly before the 14th century; however, since about the mid-14th century, the relics have been removed from the shrine approximately every seven years for public veneration.[3]

Marienschrein (Shrine of Saint Mary), gold (1230-1239), Aachen Cathedral, Aachen, Germany

Marienschrein (Shrine of Saint Mary), gold (1230-1239), Aachen Cathedral, Aachen, Germany

I am unsure exactly what color the relic of Saint Mary’s cloak is, or appears to be, today.  Judging by a picture of the garment taken when it was last displayed in 2007, the cloak appears to be flaxen in color, or yellowish gray, with possible hints of light blue along its hem.  It is certainly not the deep blue favored by Renaissance artists, though perhaps it has faded significantly over time.  Or perhaps it was never blue to begin with.  [NOTE:  See update below for additional information.]

One other clue to what color Saint Mary may have worn during her lifetime is preserved 300 miles southwest of Aachen, at Chartres Cathedral in Chartres, France.  One of the cathedral’s most famous stained-glass windows, a 12th-century window known as Notre Dame de la Belle Verrière (Our Lady of the Beautiful Glass), depicts the Virgin and Child in a sedes sapientiae (seat of wisdom) arrangement with the Christ Child seated on the lap of the Holy Mother.  Victoria Finlay, in her engaging study of color and pigments, Color:  A Natural History of the Palette, suggests the window shows the Virgin Mary in a blue veil.[4]  “The veil,” she writes, “is a pale color, light enough to allow the sun to flood through and depict the young woman’s purity.”[5]  However, “it is unmistakably light blue, and worn over a blue tunic.”[6]  She further notes that the glass-makers who created the window in 1150 “would have had the ‘real’ veil to model their design on, which is curious, because when you see the precious relic in its gold nineteenth-century box . . . it is not blue at all.  More of an off-white:  the faded clothing of the melancholy mother of a martyr.”[7]

The Madonna of the Stars, Jacopo Tintoretto, oil on canvas (second half of the 16th century), National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

The Madonna of the Stars, Jacopo Tintoretto, oil on canvas (second half of the 16th century), National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

A Blue More Precious Than Gold

If the Virgin Mary did not wear blue, why did artists regularly paint her in blue garments?  Victoria Finlay offers several insights.  First, she explains that Saint Mary did not always wear blue in artistic representations.  In Russian icons, for example, the Virgin Mary more commonly wore red, and in Byzantine art, she often wore purple.[8]  On other occasions, she was portrayed in white to represent her innocence, or black to express her grief.[9]  Finlay also observes that artists commonly dressed her in a manner to honor her, and their choice of color was frequently decided by cost and rarity.[10]  She writes, “In fifteenth-century Holland, Mary often wore scarlet because that was the most expensive cloth; the earlier Byzantine choice of purple was similarly because this was a valuable dye, and only a few people were important enough to carry it off.  So when, in around the thirteenth century, ultramarine arrived in Italy as the most expensive color on the market, it was logical to use it to dress the most precious symbol of the faith.”[11]

Ultramarine pigment, Albrecht-Dürer-Haus, Nuremberg, Germany

Example of ultramarine pigment, Albrecht-Dürer-Haus, Nuremberg, Germany.

The deep, rich ultramarine prized by the artists of the Renaissance derived from lapis lazuli, an intensely blue, semi-precious stone found in only a few places on Earth.  For artists such as Michelangelo, Titian, and Dürer, the only source of ultramarine was Afghanistan, a “mythical land so far away that no European . . . had actually been there.”[12]  Finlay notes that ultramarine was once “the most valuable paint material in the world,” and artists such as Michelangelo would have had to wait for their patrons to procure it for them because they could not afford it on their own.[13]  Given its tremendous cost and unquestionable rarity, then, it is not surprising that so many artists chose to clothe the Virgin Mary in ultramarine.  Fortuitously, ultramarine also happens to be a serene and majestic color, one truly appropriate for the Queen of Heaven.

***

[UPDATE, 27 JUNE 2014.] The following description is from the Aachen Pilgrimage 2014 (Heiligtumsfahrt 2014) website: “St. Mary’s robe is an ancient work of domestic embroidery. . . .  It is made of naturally coloured linen and is embroidered with vertical and horizontal lines in a grid pattern.  In Israel flax and cotton were only to be found on the coast and in the lowlands of Jordan . . . .”  The website further notes that the dress is 153 cm long; the seam circumference is 246 cm; and the span of the sleeves is 132 cm.  The Aachen Pilgrimage 2014 homepage can be found here.  More information about the cloak of Saint Mary can be found here.  A picture of the robe can be viewed here.

***

Madonna and Child, Vittore Carapaccio, oil on panel (1505-1510), National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Madonna and Child, Vittore Carapaccio, oil on panel (1505-1510), National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Madonna and Child, Jan Gossaert, oil on panel (c. 1532), National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Madonna and Child, Jan Gossaert, oil on panel (c. 1532), National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Virgin and Child, sandstone with traces of polychrome (c. 1325-1350).

Virgin and Child, sandstone with traces of polychrome (c. 1325-1350), Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Madonna and Child, stained-glass window, Strasbourg Cathedral, Strasbourg, France.

Madonna and Child, stained-glass window, Strasbourg Cathedral, Strasbourg, France.

Aachen Cathedral with High Altar and Pala d'Oro in foreground and Marienschrein (Shrine of Saint Mary) behind.

Aachen Cathedral with High Altar and Pala d’Oro in foreground and Marienschrein (Shrine of Saint Mary) behind.  Hanging from the vault above the choir is a wooden medallion of the Madonna and Child carved by Jan van Steffesweert of Maastricht in 1524.


[1] George Ferguson, Signs and Symbols in Christian Art 71 (1954).

[2] Id. at 151.

[3] John Carroll Cruz, Relics 23 (1984).

[4] Victoria Finlay, Color: A Natural History of the Palette 317 (2002).

[5] Id.

[6] Id.

[7] Id.

[8] Id. at 292-93.

[9] Id. at 293.

[10] Id.

[11] Id.

[12] Id. at 282.

[13] Id. at 287.

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