Cerberus is Still Barking!

Good old Corona, Cerberus to be exact, is still barking and standing at my easel still seems far away but still it’s Wednesday and time to post! 

Theses are some of the fabulous windows in Oberammergau! Many of the houses are painted with this amazing Trompe-l'œil (trick of the eye) called Lüftlmalerei, sometimes the whole façade and sometimes just around the windows. The talent of these painters are incredible and the painted decorations often have ''shadows'' making them completely 3D. The trend started really in the Baroque/Rococo and probably spread from Italy over the Alps to Austria and Germany, in Oberammergau things really kicked off with Franz Seraph Zwinck (1748-92) and the word Lüftlmalerei is attributed to the name of his house ''Zum Lüftl''. 

Painted into wet plaster, these frescoes are not only found in Oberammergau but all over Bavaria. Many of the churches feature frescoes and as pink marble was very fashionable in churches during the Baroque/Rococo many of the altarpieces and pillars in churches of this time are also ''fake'', painted to look like marble and therefore not as expensive as the real thing. 

Now here’s something else you’ll see when out and about in Germany……!

Not the fabulous lintel from 1510, but this 20*C+M+B+22, have you got an idea as to what it could be? 

It’s a house blessing! After Epiphany on the 6th of January, the so-called ''Sternsinger'' go from house to house collecting for the poor and blessing the house with incense and this inscription. 

Now this is where things get a little politically incorrect, the Sternsingers are traditionally dressed as the Three Wise Kings and one was always represented as being black. The tradition goes back to Medieval times where ''blackface'' wasn’t an issue, to be honest I don’t know how it is dealt with today as the last couple of Corona years prevented the (300,000) Sternsingers ringing at the doors. The blessing is often misconstrued as being Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar, the names of the Three Wise Kings, in fact it is Latin, Christus Mansionem Benedicat 

Jesus bless this house, the 20+22 is the year, so next year it will read as 23. 

As our house is a house with infectious inhabitants, in the plague years our door would have been marked with a huge red cross and the words Lord Have Mercy on Us, and we'd be locked in for 40 days (origin of the word quarantine, from quaranta 40). Thank goodness we've got Corona and not the Bubonic Plague, hopefully we’ll be able to get out soon and we don’t have to start creating a Passion Play like in Oberammergau to keep the Plague at bay! I think we'd have a lot of trouble taking over all the roles!