| In the first half of the fifteenth century, a new type of Marian image circulated in southern Germany and Austria. Appearing in a variety of formats, including panel painting, wood sculpture, and woodcut, images from this group depicted the Virgin Mary as a solitary maiden, standing with her arms folded in prayer and wearing a dress covered with a botanical pattern. Focusing on this pattern, which most often represents wheat sheaves, art historians have used the term “Ährenkleidmaria” (Mary in a Wheat Dress) to identify the type. This dissertation takes a somewhat different approach, focusing primarily on Mary's solitary stance as the basis for interpretation, and concentrating on a single example of the type, a panel painting by an unknown artist at the pilgrimage chapel in Strassengel, a village outside of Graz, Austria.;Known as the Virgin of Strassengel, the image was first placed at this local shrine around 1430/40, during a period of relative prosperity for the Cistercian monastery of Rein which supervised and drew revenue from the site. Focusing on the historical context of the site, which functioned initially as a grange for that foundation, this dissertation analyzes the religious culture in which this enigmatic late medieval image of the Virgin Mary played a prominent role. Drawing equally upon literary and visual sources in which Mary appears apart from her son, this study identifies the range of meanings that the image evoked for its early viewers and demonstrates how it addressed the diverse devotional requirements of the monastic and lay communities served by the shrine.;Chapter One presents the historical and legendary background of the shrine, which was the subject of a jurisdictional dispute around the time that the image first appeared. Chapter Two considers late medieval vernacular accounts of Mary's life, including Philip the Carthusian's Marienleben, as important sources for interpreting the image at Strassengel. Chapters Three and Four place the iconography of the Virgin within the context of the Feast of the Assumption and Chapter Five considers how the previously unexamined context of the Assumption suggests new interpretive possibilities for the pattern on Mary's dress. |
