Flemish carved pearwood prayer bead

An image of Sculpture. Prayer Bead. Possibly from a rosary. Unknown maker, Flanders. The two hemispherical parts are hinged together and fastened with a silver clasp. The outsides are carved with pierced 'flamboyant' tracery, and both ends have a silver mount and ring. The inside surfaces have minute figure carvings: one is of the Virgin, seated, holding the Child on her left knee with her left hand and offering a fruit with her right hand. Her hair reaches down to her waist. The edge of the little roundel is cusped. The other carving is of St Cecilia seated on the right playing an organ, set obliquely to the picture plane, and pumped by an angel on the left. St Cecilia's hair falls in ringlets to her waist. Pearwood, carved, with silver mounts, diameter, whole, 4.0 cm, length, whole, 4.3 cm, circa 1500-1525. Renaissance.

Terms of use

These images are provided for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons License (BY-NC-ND). To license a high resolution version, please contact our image library who will discuss fees, terms and waivers.

Download this image

Creative commons explained - what it means, how you can use our's and other people's content.

Sculpture. Prayer Bead. Possibly from a rosary. Unknown maker, Flanders. The two hemispherical parts are hinged together and fastened with a silver clasp. The outsides are carved with pierced 'flamboyant' tracery, and both ends have a silver mount and ring. The inside surfaces have minute figure carvings: one is of the Virgin, seated, holding the Child on her left knee with her left hand and offering a fruit with her right hand. Her hair reaches down to her waist. The edge of the little roundel is cusped. The other carving is of St Cecilia seated on the right playing an organ, set obliquely to the picture plane, and pumped by an angel on the left. St Cecilia's hair falls in ringlets to her waist. Pearwood, carved, with silver mounts, diameter, whole, 4.0 cm, length, whole, 4.3 cm, circa 1500-1525. Renaissance.

Image data

Accession Number: MAR.M.262-1912
Photograph copyright © The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
Aperture: f/39.0
Focal length: 120
Camera: Hasselblad H3DII-31
Photographer name: Jaymes Sinclair
Image height: 635 pixels
Image width: 1024 pixels
Processed with: Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5.6 (Macintosh)
Filesize: 175.26kB
Exposure time: 1/60
ISO Speed: 100
Fnumber: 39/1

Key words

16th Century Artistic Movement Catholic Catholicism Date Department Fitz_AA Flemish Material Nationalities Netherlandish Northern Renaissance Object Type Other Keywords Renaissance Silver Workflow _WF_AdOK _WF_KWD _WF_OPACtd _WF_PCtd bead carved clasps hinged pearwood pierced prayer prayer bead praying religion religious rosary rosary beads tracery window wood wooden

Citation for print

This page can be cited in the Harvard Bibliographic style using the text below:


            The Fitzwilliam Museum (2024)
            "Flemish carved pearwood prayer bead"
            Web page available at: https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/id/image/media-187641 Accessed: 2024-12-22 18:16:59

Citation for Wikipedia

To cite this page on Wikipedia you can use this code snippet:


            {{cite web|url=https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/id/image/media-187641
            |title=Flemish carved pearwood prayer bead
            |author=The Fitzwilliam Museum|accessdate=2024-12-22 18:16:59|publisher=The
            University of Cambridge}}

API call for this record

To call these data via our API (remember this needs to be authenticated) you can use this code snippet:

https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/api/v1/images/media-187636

Bootstrap HTML code for reuse

To use this as a simple code embed, copy this string:

<div class="text-center">
    <figure class="figure">
        <img src="https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/imagestore/aa/aa30/MAR_M_262_1912_1_201407_jas244_mas.jpg"
        alt="Prayer bead"
        class="img-fluid" />
        <figcaption class="figure-caption text-info">Flemish carved pearwood prayer bead</figcaption>
    </figure>
</div>