Anna Cuspinian - Portrait Presentation.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lucas_Cranach_d._%C3%84._-_Portrait_of_Anna_Cuspinian_-_WGA05692.jpg

·   As we are studying the Elizabethans at university at the moment, we have been looking into Elizabethan portraits and the symbolism which is used in the paintings, to show their status and wealth.After trolling through portrait after portrait, this one in particular caught my eye it is of Anna Cuspinian and was painted in 1502 by Lucas Cranach the Elder.  It caught my eye because it is slightly different to the others I saw, using slightly different shades of colour and the deeper you look into the portrait the more you see.

•          I have cut and zoomed into different sections of the painting and discovered what those symbols would have meant back then.
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•        The Parrot - the chastity of the Virgin remained an amazing thing to married women for many centuries. The image of the parrot on the tree, the call of the bird was thought to be "Ave", the Angelic Salutation, since the middle Ages it had therefore been considered as, a sign of the innocence and purity associated with Mary.
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•        The Fire and the Women – The nine women washing, bathing and carrying water in the middle distance between this painting of Anna and the painting of her husband which stands alongside this portrait as they were create for their wedding, appear to be the nine Muses.
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•         The symbol for women is water, which is intended to be balanced out by the fire behind Anna Cuspinian. Perhaps this symbolises the different genders: according to my research, fire was male and all of these symbols seem appropriate for a wedding painting.
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•          The fire is eating the burning bush, which was used as a symbol for the Immaculate Conception during the late middle Ages because it "burned with fire" but "was not consumed", just as Mary had remained a virgin even though she was pregnant.
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•       The framing of the portraits by trees and the darkened sky is said to have been conducted by Cusinipian himself, who was inspired by the Pico della Mirandola's "Poetica Theologica", and Marsilio Ficmo's doctrine of divine mysteries.
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•       He concludes that the various images disguise used in the background disguise an example of the artist's secretive use of symbols, turning them into "occult" figures.

·         After researching all these symbols used within the painting it intrigues me more than it ever did when I first saw it, and I am still finding out things about Anna, there is barley anything actually about her I have discovered there is a lot about her husband, but she is a unknown character looking out from the blank expression of the painting.

Poppy x