(attr. to) Adriaen van Overbeke - Emerentia at her prayer (1521) - panel of the Goldenes Wunder von Westfalen {Golden Wonder (Altar) of Westphalia} in Petrikirche, Dortmund, Germany. I am surprised I didn't share this panel here before. I am also surprised by how firm my belief remains that it's my picture, that I took it myself.
I didn't, though I have been to Dortmund and visited this church of St. Peter - where I indeed saw this 'Golden Wonder', its giant carved altar (below is my picture indeed):
The giant (5.5 x 7.5 m!) frontal side of the altar consists of 30 compartments with gilded carved figures, together showing Christ's Passion, a stunning masterpiece of elaborate woodcraft of the era:
But to say that I've seen the altar would not be very accurate, as I saw only this side - and it makes only about a third of its total surface. True, this is perhaps the most famous part, the so-called 'holiday side', as it is indeed shown only during the holidays. I was lucky to visit it during Christmas holidays.
To explain the complexity of the entire piece, I can show a mini-model of the altar (it's sold in the souvenir shop):
When these holiday wings are closed, we see yet another full altarpiece (retabel in Flemish), only this time composed of 36 oil panels (you can see the panel with Emerentia in the bottom right corner:
This is the view that people see in the church most of the time (and which I missed, so I have to consider visiting it again; I'm using somebody else's picture for now).
Just to complete the overview, when they close these panels, we see yet another subset of panels, on the 'true' rear wings (I am showing the model that I bought):
The panel with the praying Emerentia is, of course, interesting (for me, that is) because of the convex mirror, set in a remarkable octagonal frame and hanging in front of the window:
We've seen a very similar design in a panel by Jan de Beer, The Birth of the Virgin (c.1520s):
I've shared it here before in full, but didn't focus on that mirror back then (I was busy with another one).
Notice also that it's an almost identical design of the windows: in both paintings their bottom parts covered by a blind of some sort (was it done for privacy reasons? or to make the use of these mirrors more efficient - e.g., to be less distracted by the street views?)
By the way, if you plan to look at a mirror, placing it in this way in a window is ideal - the mirror itself remains in shadow but your face is lit by the light, so you could see it very well.
However, in many such scenes the mirrors were placed not as part of morning toilette, but as a symbol, a reference to the famous attribute of Mary, Speculum sine macula, mirror without stain. In the mirror of de Beer we can clearly see the reflection of the maid who is warming the baby Mary at the fireplace; we can even recognize something like an open door in the background, hinting at the Van Eyckian trick of placing hidden 'observers' into the scene (a good place to put a small cameo of the patrons, for example):
The reflection in the panel from the Wonder Altar is less clear - we can only guess if we see the head of the praying woman there.
But who's this Emerentia?
Well, she seems to be a pretty important figure in European (Christian) history. Yet, she is surprisingly little known for all her importance, or at least very rarely depicted - her iconography is super scarce.
She is actually a great-grandmother of Jesus Christ, the woman who gave birth to St. Anna, the grandmother of Jesus. In the panel by Jan de Beer it is St. Anna who rests in her bed after giving birth to Mary.
And there is another panel in this altar showing the very birth of St. Anna - so it's actually this Emerentia who lies in bed this time, and St. Anna is the newborn girl who is warmed at the fireplace this time:
Speaking about mirrors, there is another remarkable object that hangs on the headboard this time, above St. Emerentia (she was of course sanctified at some point):
I added the fragment of the panel by Jan de Beer where we also see a similar object, even more decorative - but perhaps even less resembling a mirror.
In many cases plain convex mirrors were put in these places - on beds or nearby; often they were also additionally decorated and/or inscribed. These were not 'toilette mirrors' but rather icons of some sort, objects for praying at (we see both women at prayer). I wrote extensively on these thingies at some point; here is the latest post about them - On one ‘mirror’, one more time
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Perhaps worth adding that all these births were considered immaculate, that is, sinless - or even sexless? Here is the tricky part: the concept of the Immaculate Conception is very complex and hotly debated - leaving aside the issue of 'did they have sex or not?', it strictly speaking just says that Mary was preserved from original sin from the first moment of her conception. In any case, many of these panels were direct references to the Immaculate Conception (and so the use of mirrors).
And to be clear, the famous doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is in fact not about Jesus - that he was conceived miraculously is not even the question for Christians.
What was up for grabs was the conception of his mother, Mary - and with time (and in certain confessions, most prominently Catholicism) it was decided that she, too, was somehow conceived without the original sin or was at least somehow protected from it (important to remember that in many Christian confessions, like Orthodox Christianity, this idea is actually not endorsed). In any case, these debates about the Immaculate Conception - of Mary - are a very interesting chapter in the history of Christianity.
If we go further down, the next logical question would be the conception of St. Anna, the mother of Mary, and if she, too, was conceived free from original sin - and so the figure of (St.) Emerentia emerged. It never got any big traction in theological debates, but in this altar we see traces of the efforts to also position her pregnancy (and subsequent birth of St. Anna) as immaculate.
One of the panels shows the so-called 'Vision of St. Emerentia', a poorly documented story saying that St. Anna was also conceived after Emerentia saw a certain celestial creature in her dream; basically, turtles to the very bottom:
