page_title: Madonna of the Dry Tree
section_title: Iconography
hierarchical_section_title: Madonna of the Dry Tree / Iconography
caption_attribution_description: Madonna of the Dry Tree
context_page_description: Madonna of the Dry Tree is a small oil-on-oak panel painting dated c. 1462–1465 by the Early Netherlandish painter Petrus Christus. Unusually innovative and dramatic, it presents the Virgin Mary holding the Christ Child while standing on a disembodied dead tree trunk and surrounded by a crown of thorns.
  The painting's imagery is thought to be derive from the Book of Ezekiel, with the dry tree a symbol of the withered Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden, brought to life by the Virgin and the birth of Christ. The 15 golden "A"s hanging from the branches of the tree represent the first letter of the Angelic Salutation, the Ave Maria. The Christ Child holds an orb crowned with a cross. The iconography may draw from the Confraternity of Our Lady of the Dry Tree in Bruges, to which both Christus and his wife Gaudicine belonged.
context_section_description: The work's iconography is both dramatic and highly unusual, and was described by Ainsworth as unprecedented in Netherlandish painting. The imagery may be derived from Ezekiel 17:24: "…and all the trees of the field shall know that I the Lord have brought down the high tree, have exalted the low tree, have dried up the green tree, and have made the dry tree to flourish".
  The painting seems to be a somewhat bitter representation of the "Tree of Knowledge", but wilted and thorny. Art historians presume it represents a metaphor for original sin, and that presumably the tree will not return to life until the coming of Christ. The tree received a green graft from the Tree of Knowledge, wrote medieval philosopher Guillaume de Deguileville in his Le Pèlerinage de l'Âme (The Pilgrimage of the Soul), metaphorically reflected in the birth of the Virgin to a barren mother.
  The 15 letter A's hanging from the tree are generally seen as abbreviations for Ave, or Ave Maria. Their number may to be an allusion to the 150 "Hail Marys" recited in then-contemporary versions of the rosary, although this form of devotion did not become popular until 1475, some ten years after Christus' panel. Two other interpretations for the A's have been put forth. One is that they symbolize arbor or arbore, as other similar devotional works show the trees in an arbor. Hugo van der Velden suggests the possibility that the piece might have been commissioned by a member of the confraternity, Anselme Adornes, whose interest in devotional work is evidenced by his possession of van Eyck's Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata.
caption: Golden letter A hanging from dark withered branch.
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