Curiosities
Rosaries in Daily Life and Art
The late Middle Ages
By the late fifteenth century rosaries were everywhere. Men and women hung them from their belts or wound them around their wrists, and portrait sitters held them to show their piety, as in Hans Baldung's portrait of a young man, dated 1509. Wills and inventories list beads of coral, amber, jet and silver, and in Paris and London whole guilds of 'paternosterers' made nothing else.
Some rosaries were small works of art. Wealthy owners commissioned carved terminal beads to hang at the end of the strand. This one, made in northern Europe around 1500–1525, shows a pair of young lovers on one side and Death on the other: a quiet reminder, as the fingers moved from bead to bead, that beauty passes and eternity remains.