Chapter 5 2. The devil in striped clothes-4

Solid color, stripes, small patterns, spots Medieval personalities were extraordinarily concerned with the materiality and structure of surfaces.Structure is primarily for him to identify places and objects, to distinguish regions and levels, to determine rhythm and order, to combine, compare, arrange, classify and grade.All surfaces, whether natural or man-made, are carriers of classification signs, whether walls and soil, fabrics and clothes, utensils of daily life, leaves, animal skins or the human body itself.Articles and portraits give us countless examples.After research, the surface structure can be classified into three categories of symbols: monochrome, small patterns and stripes.The latter two classes manifest themselves in a large number of variants (for example, variegated squares were to the senses of medieval man no more than the highest form of stripes).Let's examine these three structures and how they manifest on images and objects.

True monochrome is rarer and therefore more noticeable.On the one hand, on many substances, medieval technology cannot achieve an even, smooth, clean, monochrome surface (as is the case with fabrics, for example).Artists and craftsmen, on the other hand, are hesitant to leave large voids, and are often tempted to fill or "cover" them with weft, hatching, or colour, which has nothing to do with weave, density, lightness, or the resulting Dealing with contrasts of matter.In portraiture, a completely and evenly monochrome surface is by no means common, but a special case in order to express a specific intention, to emphasize a certain element of the portrait.In fact, monochrome is underwhelming when used alone.However, when it is contrasted with stripes, spots, checks, or even whatever weft is added to or processed surface, it always expresses emphasis, whether it is positive emphasis or reverse emphasis.

On the contrary, small patterns are always favored by people. It is a monochrome that increases density and value.It is small motifs at equal intervals distributed on a monochromatic plane, either geometric or classical, inspired by heraldry: spiers, gold or silver circles, stars, ringlets, small crosses, shamrocks, lilies .Regularly arranged patterns are often lighter in color than the surface on which they are backgrounded.Dotted with small patterns almost always express some solemn, great, and even sacred meaning.It is thus used in certain royal coats of arms and saints' robes, in many liturgical objects, and in numerous pictures representing sacred scenes.The Madonna, in particular, always had some special relationship with the fretwork.As for the coats of arms of the kings of France "in azure adorned with golden lilies", one can see them on their shields, banners, and other carriers, and they are the most typical examples of medieval fretwork.It is a sign of power, a decoration of the universe, a feature of the Virgin Mary, a symbol of kingship and fecundity [24].Moreover, in portraits, all frets are still motifs, fixed to their supports.Facing the audience, it does not describe itself, it does not describe itself, it is there.

Spots are small, irregular patterns.Not only are the distribution of these small patterns haphazard, but their own shapes are also irregular: no longer stars, gold or silver circles, small crosses, but deformed decorative patterns or simple spots.Such spots express the concepts of disorder, chaos and rebellion.Visually, the dividing line between the dotted pattern and the irregular spots is not very clear; however, symbolically, these are two worlds opposed to each other.One side is divine and the other is diabolical.On the bodies of humans and animals, spots are used to signify hairiness, uncleanliness, or disease. Spots are often associated with pus, scrofula, and lymphatic arthritis.In a society where skin disease was both the most serious, the most common and the most feared ailment—think of the fate of the “lepers”—spots signified decay, disruption of social order, harbingers of death, and hell.In fact, devils and devilish creatures are often spotted in portraits [25].

These creations can also be striped, in a sense the meaning of which is more ambiguous.In fact, stripes are the opposite of monochrome and spots, and are often the antithesis of both.It could be something else, though: it is the rhythmic, dynamic, expressive surface that signifies action, the transition from one state to another.In miniature paintings of the 13th century, demon kings and rebellious gods often bear crosses, vivid symbols of their depravity.These stripes are also for emphasis: the viewer's eye cannot but be drawn to the striped surface.In all portraits, stripes are the most striking. Flemish paintings from the 15th to 16th centuries sometimes used a method of placing the person in striped clothing at the center or focal point of the picture or oil painting. As soon as the work is seen, the audience's eyes will be attracted by this figure.Sometimes the striped man looks like a real person.Memling, Bosch, Bruegel, and several others were particularly good at this technique: not for major stage or historical figures, but for minor figures of the third order.The only function of this figure is to temporarily take our eyes off the more important areas of the picture that need to be savored.In the famous Carrying the Cross (1563), a gigantic painting of more than 500 figures, Bruegel places almost near the center of the composition an unknown, insignificant peasant walking hurriedly, Wears a toque hat and white and red diagonally striped gown.Because these stripes form a strong visual contrast with the surrounding environment, the first thing the audience sees is the peasant instead of the mourning Madonna supported by John and the saints in the front of the picture, let alone the heavy weight of the cross in the back row The fallen Jesus, drowned in the indifferent crowd, seems to be forgotten [26].

Consider this "visual priority" of stripes compared to other surface structures.Stripes are more eye-catching than monochrome, dotted with small patterns, and even spots.Is this a sensory phenomenon unique to Westerners?Or is this common to all cultures, even humans and certain animals?Is there a line between biology and culture in such phenomena?If so, where is it?To these difficult questions I will try to answer at the end of this book. What one can identify is the connection between medieval stripes and the concept of variety, that is, with the medieval Latin word Varietas.Sometimes stripes (virgulatus, lineatus, fasciatus, etc.) and variation (varius) are synonymous, and stripes, which is a synonym for variation, is entirely a derogatory term.In fact, as far as medieval culture is concerned, varius was always unclean, provocative, immoral, or deceptive.People with a "varius" reputation were either cunning or lying or cruel, or were sick, especially those with mental or skin diseases.In addition, the term varietas itself refers to deception, evil and leprosy [27].We have seen in portraits the perfidious (Cain, Judas), the cruel (the executioner), the "mad" (court jester, the madman of the Psalms), or the disabled It is only natural that people (lepers, hypocrites) are often dressed in striped garments.There is a big difference between our modern sense and that of the medieval people, we feel that "change" has a positive connotation, contains the meaning of youth, cheerfulness, tolerance, curiosity, and they mainly give the word a contemptuous connotation .A good Christian, a righteous person cannot be "varius", "varietas" are associated with sin and hell.

The same goes for animals.Animals with stripes (tigridus) or spots (maculosus) on their fur are feared.They may be cruel and bloodthirsty, such as tigers, hounds, and leopards (the medieval leopard has little connection to the true cat of the same name, and is often synonymous with the dangerous lion[28]); The petty, like the trout and the magpie; or the cunning, like the snake or the wasp; and the devilish, like the cat or the dragon.Even the zebra, so popular with Renaissance zoologists, became a dangerous animal by the end of the Middle Ages.True, the authors had never seen zebras and knew very little about them (they thought zebras were a species of donkey or wild ass), but because they knew zebras had stripes they assumed that zebras were a ferocious beast of prey. Animals that are scary to people, animals like devils [29].Later, we'll talk about how this underappreciated animal was rediscovered during the Enlightenment.

Besides, exotic animals aside, all horses with dirty coats are disgraceful mounts for their riders.In literature, especially in novels of chivalry, the hero on a white horse is not the same as a horse on a mottled horse (that is, a horse with alternating blue and silver coat stripes, a horse with gray and white spots, a horse with dark stripes) , horses with black and white or red and white fur, millet gray and white horses, bay red horses, etc.), traitors, bastards or foreigners [30].A similar value system, albeit in a completely different context, can be seen inAnimals with stripes (Granbell the badger) or spots (Tibble the cat) are the same as animals with brown fur (Reynard the fox, Rousseau the squirrel) and they are liars, thieves, lewd or greedy animals .To animal societies, as to human societies, being brown, striped, or spotted means more or less the same thing.

A longstanding mistrust, even fear, of animals with spots or stripes has left its mark on the Western imagination.Even in the eighteenth century, the famous beast of Gervaudan, which caused panic in the Auvergne and Vivarays between 1764 and 1767, was described as a beast by those who saw it, or thought they had seen it. Huge wolf with broad stripes on its back [31].This beast of Gevordan, a devilish animal, could not but be a striped animal.In the decades that followed, and even until the middle of the nineteenth century, other beasts of Gervaudan were recognized as striped animals, which disturbed the hearts and minds of the French provincial countryside [32].Look at today's tiger again.Now only seen in zoos, they wow us with their fur, but in modern mythology the tiger remains a symbol of extreme cruelty.

From a semiotic point of view, medieval cultures saw stripes and spots as synonymous, which made people think about the concept of surface structure itself.For us, structures can only start with three-dimensional distributions.On the contrary, to medieval man, there was no difference between two dimensions and three dimensions, four dimensions, ten dimensions, and so on.On the one hand there is monochrome—called plain in French and popular satirical poetry of the sixteenth century, and on the other everything that is not monochrome: spots, stripes, checks...all structures that ultimately embody the same value.This equivalence exists in the realm of color, where there is no difference between bichromatic and polychromatic.In the case of courtesans in red and yellow striped gowns and charlatans and clowns in 3, 10, 20, 100 different colored checks or lozenges[33], their clothes convey the same Chaos, disorder, noise and impurity.Two colors and 10 colors mean the same thing; two stripes are equivalent to 10 squares or 100 rhombuses.Stripes, spots, motleys, colours, may differ visually—mainly there is a matter of dimension,[34] we shall see this when we speak of heraldry—but not conceptually and socially. no difference.They just reflect different degrees of the same state, namely destruction.