Resumen de Petrus Christus's "Our Lady of the dry tree"
The writer discusses Our Lady of the Dry Tree, a 15th-century panel painting by Petrus Christus, arguing that its unusual iconography was derived from a miraculous image that was held in high esteem by members of the confraternity of Our Lady of the Dry Tree in Bruges, Belgium. He explains that the panel, which is approximately 15 by 12 centimeters, represents the Virgin and Child standing in the fork of a barren tree, from which 15 golden A's are suspended. He argues that as the name of the Bruges confraternity was in use long before the panel was painted, it must provide the key to the meaning of the work's unusual iconography. He suggests that the confraternity of Our Lady of the Dry Tree was dedicated to a miraculous sculpture of the Virgin, which was suspended in a dry—meaning dead—tree when it first manifested its miraculous potency and which thereafter became a cult image. He posits that the iconography of Christus's painting is an explicit and unequivocal testimony to this cult, an interpretation that can be sustained by visual, archival, circumstantial, and comparative sources.
