 I'm honored to speak in front of you this evening, especially with this subject, which is very close to my heart, I may say so. For this conference, this lecture is just a kind of addendum to the main research I published in the form of a book last year about what I call the county prayer, which is taken with praying, with beats, counting the prayers, numbers. And if I may add this as an introduction to this personal anecdote, I started this study 40 years ago when I was a child, and because my mother went in a shop to buy for a first communion one of these groceries, I was so puzzled to see the numbers, why were there 50 beats and why were they arranged this way. I started collecting them, which I did for several years, and that was the only way to study this very interesting, I think, practice of the county prayer, which is probably the most idiosyncratic practice of devotion for lay people in the West in Christianity. As would be icon worship for Orthodox, the repeated prayer would be the thing for lay people, and especially because it's not as a devotion for, I think, others, the after-reformation for Catholic people and for prayer-reformation for the West in Christianity, but it was not very well viewed by the church would try to organize it, but it sprang from other places. It's not a kind of state-programmed thing that would be the worship of the Holy Sacrament, for instance, would be a kind of imposed devotion on the people. But this county prayer was something which just happened and had to be organized. So, my purpose tonight is not to discuss this very wide subject, but just to, as a kind of addendum to this work, to see this relationship to the early portraiture in Renaissance Europe, and it's quite astonishing, at least to me, that so many of these sitters are this day fondling or touching pieces for quite a short period of painting, which is almost the time where portraiture, individual portraiture emerges in Western art, and is spreading among all social classics. So, as it was just early, a very beautiful example by Van der Vijden, the Anwerp, who used to do choir with his beats between his hands. And, of course, it's not strictly stating an individual portraiture that is probably part of the duty, that is, what kind of underlying art. It's in San Marino collection, but nevertheless, the fact that he is praying not just with a gesture that with beats doesn't change anything to my purpose. And, in fact, it's one of the commonest type of portrait in the late 15th century and 16th century painting. Just to show you a few examples, because we hardly look at those things in the hands of the sitters when we see this painting, which is, because it's only a small object, but it's present, it must be meaningful, and that's the purpose of my lecture tonight. So, by Jean-Saint-Claire, by Louis Sola, and Dürer, and Arthurine, I don't know Spanish, but it's not my purpose to discuss really the merits of this portraiture. Also, as you see, this is a very interesting arrangement because it's kind of addictive, but there is no figure of devotion to be related to it. There's no personal saying, but there are only a couple, as a couple in history, I would say, in time, and I will come back to that later. For example, Dürer's father with beads. And the question is, what may be the relationship of, maybe I put this one, let's pause this with what I'm saying right now, the question of this apparition of modern portrait, that is to say the purpose of preserving the denierments, the appearance of the mortal man, which is kind of a new pattern, especially as it's not in a kind of abstract and generalized way as would be in sculpture or in metal, for instance, where it's kind of memory. But when it's so realistic, and especially because of the costume, which is so present, the attention to dress, which links the scissors obviously to a special moment of its own life or fashion, so something very concrete and very fugitive in time, not in this kind of long duration life would be like a portrait metal movie, which is kind of timeless, but something, and the attention of putting always the age of the sitter, and not even his name, which is quite, let's say, aggravating to us to know he was like 20, 24, or 83, and we don't know his name and we don't know the painter, who would know that. So it's very strange that this desire to keep this image of the living man due to, who dies someday, will disappear and his memory, then he will fail also, is so rooted into this phrase of the instant, and there is some kind of paradox, we will be told very much about what Western culture is. Anyway, the presence at this very period of creation and the early development of portraits in Western culture, the presence of this very object must tell us something about what these portraits are meaning, what these people would like to have their personal appearance recorded with the subject in their hands. As we are now, if you want to prove your devotion, that would be an obvious answer, you just pay for something, you pay for a nice case of investment or something to be done, to have your own picture made at your expense, to show yourself at your own height, it's not working this way. To take a similar, I've chosen this very famous portrait of Jean-Marc Nathier, showing Madame Adelaide making knots, because she's holding, or it's the same process, of object working as Paragon in the painting, as something which is there and which is kind of commentary on the whole project, both ethical and aesthetical. And she's making knots, you see with this kind of small object with all the entrenchment of Navet, which is a natural object, which was copied on a loom shuttle, and it was devised for ladies not to be idle in society, so it had no function than to show the working hand of a lady, which was a way of putting the entrenchment on the thing, and also to show that a lady should never even remain idle, even if she's conversing. So ladies would have these golden shuttles with thread, and were making knots. And there are many, many portraits within a small period of time of these ladies making knots, and finally they were making a kind of lace of a very adelian lace, which was called frivolity. So it was both a mixture of pleasure and several ethical or social behavior for women. So to go back to our subject, the question of counting prayers with beads, what is the purpose of counting while repeating something you've said before? It's repetition, it's a counter value even in scripture, and Matthew would say, why are you repeating always the same thing like pagans do? And at best it's supposed to be like a kind of a cithicism, and at worst it's like a magical practice to enforce things to happen by repeating by the power of the mere power of a forehand soul. Repetition is not in such a thing very positive. We have to look for a reason for that in the early Christian practice to recite the hundred and fifty psalms every day. So this psalm, if you like, ought to read them or to know them by heart, is anyway a very tedious and long process which obviously was not open to anybody. So in monastic rule, for instance, they started to change this praying with thought with the hundred and fifty psalms every day to the repetition of something an hundred and fifty times, like a father an hundred and fifty times. And especially for penances, purposes, because in early Christian penances were like five-year fasting or very heavy penances, and they were commuted to this kind of repetitive prayer. At the beginning, only the old father, the paternal son, was concerned with this practice, but when the Hague Mary became a more common prayer during the 18th-thousandth century, it tended to be also repeated this way. And we have to think that the Hague Mary, in this period, and not what we call the second part, it was only the first part where the words of the angel and the greeting of Elizabeth, and there was not a second part of the praying for us at the time of hot death and etc. So it was not a shorter and simpler prayer than it is now. So this repetition is not only about performing something as would be the perfect old prayer of the Orthodox, where we pray all the time without counting. Here there is a purpose of achieving something by calculation, and once you've finished, it composes something new, which is the complexion of what they call, for instance, in the 13th-th century, the sorter of old lady, like there was the sorter of old, which are the actual souls of David and the Testament, and there was this new sorter of old lady composed only of 150 Hague Mary. This way of composing something complete and perfect in its way with small elements, which is exactly what these or nots are, completing a certain number of things, was almost immediately compared to flowers, because flowers are the most accessible of offerings. It's something both very beautiful, very precious, and anybody can get, especially the rose, which is a perfect flower in medieval times. So there would be a connection made between this flower offered to the shrine and the prayer being itself a flower. And of course these flowers, composed together, would make not a nose game, as we would suppose, but what was something more akin to the sort of practice of the time, the crown, to be put on the head of the beloved one. So there is plenty of evidence about this, I think you're perfectly off of this courteous way of waving or plating crowns with flower-visited result from Boccaccio, a very beautiful manuscript, eliminated by Bartholomew Degli in Vienna. And this is just thinking of our beloved one and braiding this crown of flowers. So people praying were making the same thing on a spiritual level, preparing with all these single prayers a spiritual crown to be offered to the Virgin as a token of love and devotion, as would do the gallant's night to his lady. You can see this is an earlier example of the 14th century in the manuscript showing how the lady is rewarding the night with a crown of flowers. So it was really something quite not only symbolic but quite common because we know there were corporations of people making these crowns which were sold in the street and they were bought and given between people as a token of love, as would be flowers in shape of Boccaccio today. But there is one aspect which is very important to me in this birth of a modern rosary. By the way, it's just coming from the idea of roses, obviously. It means a garden or a crown of roses. It is the idea of exchange of something given and something given like this love and the crown being a token one of the other. And this exchange, for instance, is quite obvious in the great altarpiece by Agostria in Vienna, the Fist of the Rosary, where you see here that it's the child and the Virgin who are placing crowns, roses crowns on the head of the people around them. So the offering goes both ways and there are many tales and legends about apparition of the Virgin crowning with flowers, one of the devotees who was praying to her and this kind of story. So there is this idea of exchanging gifts and getting some reward out of this practice which we see later is quite important. So of course, as we can notice quite easily the sweetness of heavenly devotion goes willingly with a pleasure of possession of nice objects. One of the nicest things we have in late medieval and early Renaissance art are related to this devotion to the taste of beautiful artifacts which are hardly needed, quickly speaking, if you just want to count on knots, on seeds, on people as the early example I showed earlier. So usually these beads to count your prayers are made of coral, of hard stones, of rock crystal, of precious metal and so on. And in this way, beyond to the dress and to the costume as any kind of jewel. And that's so maybe how one of the ways they came into portrait has been part of fashion in some way. And it's quite remarkable that the separations which makes the difference between an ordinary necklace and beads to count prayer, rosaries or of kind are the species that are called goddesses, things for fun, which are not used for counting but for separating. And that's what they like in many cascadating device. And that could be of practical order just to make this division but also be any kind of thing, as I think people are putting on their phones or on their key ring before, so just bracelets, just tiny mementos, small relics, medals from pilgrimage, anything. And I would like to show some example of a very nice object where you can see that it's obviously hardly required to have such a heavy and fragile object to say your prayers on. So that would be, like, essentially, more like patron masters than rosaries in Munich and one in the room in rock crystal which is painted inside with small scenes which are hardly visible, so it's not a question to be able to use them during prayer. And you can see that's interesting in those three exemplaries that they still have their ring. So it was something almost like a very modern gobble or something you would have in your finger and just play with and be with during the day, whether you were counting, actually, or not. So I would like to open a small parenthesis about one of these objects you may add on your beads as part of your idea of this object you may enrich with your beads. Those are the details of the same portrait actually before but they are small balls made of filigree in gold or in silver which we call them in French as in German, a gobblerine of pounder which means they're kind of small box meant to contain amber, amber grease meaning amber grease from the well or most or any kind of scented material which was supposed to give a nice perfume to be had especially to the gloves people were wearing all the time and was supposed to have also healthy properties like preventing to get contaminated by sicknesses or epidemics and certainly it was nice to have handy a source of good smell around you at any time and in any circumstances so it's interesting to see that this very mundane object as a commander is associated as part of the dress to the beads of the rosary these are two examples of Flemish patterns quite similar to what you see in the paintings and just to show you some examples of them some of them have compartments to put perfume into it most of them is amber grease and see this famous portrait of Titian showing the young tennis as well see wave on her belt this pomander here especially important to have children carrying them because they are supposed to prevent them from getting sick or what kind of profane acting values so there is a kind of back and forth movement between profanity or mundane things and sacred things in this object because you see they are meant to count prayers with the made of precious material which are carried around like jewels and the same thing happened with the pomandas which are the kind of religious or spiritual counterpart in this mock pomandas made of boxwood and I bring this point because there has been a very interesting exhibition last year in Amsterdam coming from Toronto and New York before about all this micro sculpture in boxwood but I think they missed the point of the reason being of these objects and it is to be found for instance in 16th century sources when they are discovered as a story I showed you before so you see how quality they are exactly like a secret pomander with the same kind of azure open work or figuratively work but made in wood like a limitation of something because this could be also a metal but it's not and inside when you open it you discover that you know the subjects all this incredible, miniature representation of salation so it's usually one of the most difficult and most impossible thing to show is the last judgement and that's usually what they represent in this very small tiny object with all these figures with the kind of vertigo of opening this small knot and finally inside the whole story of the world and beyond taught within this small object like when you open your pomander you have all this perfume bringing with it health and preservation from death and then you open this and you have just the same thing that brings to your senses your sight in occurrence all this wealth, spiritual wealth to ensure your spiritual health in some way and I want to quote a few texts versus how I started and it's a bit better to start with it's Dictionnel des Ecrimes Français written by Antoine Duvertier in the 6th century and it's about a note he makes about a translator Martin Fleury who translated the programs of Erasmus and that's what he says in 1544 which is just the time and the subject were made and used that's what he says in French at the end of the 6th century the Syriac Syriac of Erasmus which is an ancient proverb visited by the Greeks from which we can help each other when under apparent vanity and madness a thing will manifest itself excellent and it was Syriac small, sharp and shaped images these things were shown the figure of a trumpet where everything was shaped but the opening seemed to be divine and miraculous so I went after the original in Erasmus the idea is that you have this object with a kind of stupid outside appearance like was Silenus and not Silenus himself but social properties and as he had compared the plateaus, aquates socrates to Silenus because he saw every outside and he saw such a spiritual mind inside so that's what they're putting Erasmus for and then in 16th century you have this kind of mountain object and inside you have all this display of faith and wisdom and salvation and actually some objects of this video are exactly what I've described by Erasmus as we shall see like this small piece because it looked like a dog inside a piece which looked like beads somehow opened themselves and in them you have saints or scenes from the scriptures so it's exactly what is described by this Silenian Aquatic so this is the most popular maybe of the proverb of Erasmus was published in 1515 and it opens with Plato's banquet and I found an early English translation of the text I would like to share with you this saying among learned man is taken from a proverb which may conveniently be used either for a thing which outwardly at the first flush seems to be of no value and scornful yet if a man looked nearer to it and beholded it in world apart he'd appear with great and wonderful some say that Silenian were certain images carbon and graven and may offer such a fashion and he opened and closed the game which when they were closed at the scornful and monstrous shape and when they were opened suddenly they should as gods this fashion of images was taken of the scorned Silenian Silenian soul maester to bakers moreover he did this going about to pray socrates when he dined with Plato did liken him to such manner image and for instance after preparing Jesus Christ to a Silenian has been a god with a mere man appearance compute like this now may we also find many such images in the sacrament of the church those sees the water those sees the oil and salt for he rest the words that is that the outward part of the image for if thou never hear nor see the evenly strength and that you sent from above into the inner part of the images all the residue or no other things be but very trifle and of no value the Holy Spirit has also such images if thou stay in it the other part the manger is often wide and scornful but if you search the inner party for short wonder and reverence for good deal wisdom so it's interesting to see for instance this question this question looming around this subject about the difficult relationship of embodiment of the spiritual into objects and how we go as I say back and forth to prefer to religious and to religious to mountain so to conclude what happened in the period where concentrating on is at the very time of this appearance of portraiture in Europe but at the time where the recitation of canted prayer was standardised and with rules by the Dominicans and namely Alain de La Roche what a fearful figure and who wrote also with a shranga from my old Smalifika woman of the treatise of women's witches and so he claimed to have personal visions and by which he knew that the rosary was not something coming from the ancient practice of anachronism heredity in the desert we know where it was but it was given as a tool against the a visual heresy by the Virgin to Saint Dominic himself and so the Dominicans decided that all this body which was just there around the world practised by everybody was something belonging to them but the authorization to ground the contrary of the rosary which was the only one with the right to organise public recitation of the rosary what was the two main points of this organisation to fight the idea that this repetition was a bit pointless you had to meditate on a set of 15 episodes of the life of the Christian the Virgin which are called mysteries and these 15 mysteries were divided into 5 sets of joyous, soulful and glorious and you have a wide iconography I just showed you this Palenso Loto painting with the 15 mysteries organised in rows each shape of in circle of course because they are like beads so all this kind of mandala looking pictures because it explains how it works you say your beads according to the scheme of the mysteries you're going through and then down you see the Virgin giving the rosary to Saint Dominic and the Saint at the side and the Andrew's scattering rose petals so all these associations I was prepared into before but what is the point of following strictly the requirement of conferring the rosary is because you gain the wealth of indulgences and that was a great success of this particular devotion is that if you follow strictly all this accounting scheme of doing and of course not only reciting the number of prayers but also being confessed having taken communion and some other requirement you could get partial or complete indulgence for the living and the death which was incredible because for the living you could still hope you'll make your ways in the future and be able to do something for the dead and to alleviate the suffering of souls in purgatory was an amazing possibility so obviously it was such a comfort I mean I really wouldn't do that but praying and accumulating hundreds thousand, ten or thousand of years of remission because nobody knows how long it's going to last in purgatory so some devotion you could get as far as 50,000 years of your balance of purgatory time which was abolished in the 19th century to higher level indulgences but they still exist in Catholic theology so this is exactly the opinion where reformation we start and we start because of this undertooks business and all this is really raising for the New Saint Peter in Germany especially so all this you see is clearly interconnected I'll show you a last example of this system which is quite eloquent I think it's a small so many percent relief of this rosary triptych in Madrid and you see here how through the marriage of Christ because all the capacity of a church to give it is truly infinite marriage of Christ which can redeem any debt from anybody but the church is the banker of this treasure it's called the church treasure actually so you see the sacrifice of Christ in the center the crown of roses but set in as a rosary by 10 separated by Gaudes and you see the release of the salt from purgatory through this kind of mechanism almost system so I think to conclude when we see this modern marriage very self conscious man wanted to have this to leave a track in history not a track only with his good name or with his deed like the people which we were craving to find posers of a great man that only for emperors we had them but for very philosophers we are so difficult to read writers we hardly know very physical so very self conscious wanting more from memory than just leaving a name or words and to have to have beads to this enterprise is the project of leaving a track of one step is saying more I think about the sitter is stating something about the concern of one spiritual afterlife of course and you take in charge your own soul in a very responsible way because you are going to accumulate this wealth for yourself and not only for yourself because as you can pray for the disease one which is maybe the most fascinating part of devotion it means also you belong to a lineage that you are responsible towards people before you and that's also something to really for people after you to show how you prayed yourself for your fathers from fathers ancestors and as an admonition to your descendant to do the same and of course it would be too simple just to see them as an accessory of fashion speaking of statues of luxury maybe as we could see them but I think in a way and it can't be a very affirmative way of saying thing by the lack of concrete source but by bringing net of signification I think we can bring a sense of what it can be what can be the meaning of this use so common of rosary in the hands of cities in renaissance portraiture as another way also to describe individual life into a wider spinal time, collective time and probably also to keep eternity at bay thank you