Note: Readers not familiar with the famous Annunciation triptych in the Cloisters Museum of the Metropolitan Museum of Art may wish to consult the museum website for both an image and some background on its iconography. Link to MMA The text that follows is an excerpt from a discussion that took place in September 2002 on an Internet discussion list dedicated to serious art historical problems and issues.

In regards to the Merode Annunciation, as chance would have it, I visited the Cloisters just a few weeks ago, and had opportunity to take a careful look at some of its most minute details -- paying special attention to the towel that hangs from the rear wall -- the current topic of discussion. My companion, on seeing the towel/tallith, immediately questioned why the Master of Flemalle would include such a motif in a work so filled with Christian symbolic imagery, and wondered if it was really a tallith, since, though it contains blue threads, a blue thread (tekhellet) is not woven into the knotted fringe, and indeed, unlike the modern tallith, there does not appear to be a lengthy knotted fringe at each of the four corners, as specified in Numbers 15:37-40 -- a device said to help the wearer remember the commandments, an Old Testament predecessor of the rosary. In the Merode altar, the fringes are just ordinary selvage.

I, for one, opt against the tallith interpretation, holding that it must be a towel for the obvious reason that it is hanging next to the basin. Except for those one sees hanging on pegs outside of the men's washroom in synagogues, there is no connection between the prayer shawl and water. In the Merode, this cloth might very well refer to a prayer shawl, but does not seem to represent one. Certainly, in this respect, it is unlike those that the Virgin sometimes wears on her head (appropriately so, in view of the fact that the shawl is often drawn over the head in prayer, but inappropriately since it was only worn by men). (Tallith, as a word, is derived from the Biblical Hebrew word tillel, which means "to cover.")

As frequently noted, this "towel" must be one of those symbols that looks forward to the sacraments -- specifically, in this context, to baptism, and perhaps also to the crucifixion, but maybe also to the circumcision, and to marriage and death, too -- though I don't see any particular reason why these references fit into the Merode's pictorial scheme. If the towel (as tallith) is intended to look symbolically forward in the same way, it probably just simply implies (a frequent theme) that Judiasm is destined to be incorporated into Christianity -- in the same manner that the ewer bearing pseudo-Hebrew letters on the table is intended to connect past to future -- no doubt an Augustinian reference.

I'm writing this note to the list because I believe I've discovered a subtle connection between the towel (as towel) and the Merode symbolic strategy. Careful scrutiny of the towel reveals a faint series of marks. I see in these runic notations upper case roman characters, which, to me look as if they may have been intended to represent the number 8 (VIII). Perhaps I'm viewing just the weave pattern as represented in paint or some artifact rising from the panel underneith, and it is but wishful thinking that has transformed it into the Roman figure I want it to be. (I do tend to see more Ninas than Hirshfeld ever drew.) The number "8" of course, christologically, refers to the eighth day (infinity standing up) and has close connections with baptism as the first entry point on the sacred path to immortality -- early Christian baptismal fonts frequently being eight-sided for this reason. I believe there is an article in the Dumbarton Oaks Journal on this by (if memory serves) Paul Underwood..

But the number eight also has close connections to the Old Testament, one that arguably may be closely linked to the kind of white linen towel one sees hanging in the altarpiece. From this, I conclude that the "eight" refers to the eighth Commandment: "Thou shall not steal." This reference turns the towel into another forward looking symbol. It makes perfectly good sense to understand that an eight is appropriately placed on a towel and that the figure eight is also another forward reference to the birth of Christ -- but in a very unusual way. If this author has read the evidence correctly, the towel refers not to what happened in the Christ legend, but to what didn't happen. In the Merode altar, Robert Campin is using the towel to refer to the day of Christ's birth, specifically to the moment when Mary was turned away at the inn. The altarpiece presents an indelible symbolic memento of that rejection -- a fixed theme that has had no iconographical tradition until now. Reference to it may not be quite as potent perhaps as the Virgin's sadness when thinking forward to the crucifixion, or her holding the child on her lap -- prefiguring the pieta. No doubt, a towel, this towel, is marked thus to allude to so many ancient towels swiped from ancient inns of the Holy Land. The "Innkeepers Handbook" (6th ed., p. ix) tells us that according to legend, to ward off theft, frustrated innkeepers began to insert a reference to the eighth "VIIIth" commandment -- the Biblical admonition not to steal. Indeed, in his survey of extant fragments of early Christian and medieval threads and rags, this author has come across a few towels in the so-called Turkish weave emblazoned with a name that can only be translated as "Holy Day Inn", clearly a remnant of an ancient tradition that refers back to the lodging not offered to the Holy Family. Such towels seem to have escaped both their intended location and scholarly notice. This act of theft certainly is the perpetual symbol of customer dissatisfaction and the symbol of  surreptitious lifting, frowned upon by innkeepers everywhere. Further, this reference to the towel may be taken as evidence of an early stage of the process of humanization to which the image of the Virgin was to be subjected in subsequent centuries -- but, here, executed entirely within the symbolic formulas of early Netherlandish art.

The next paper in this series, provisionally titled "Too Clean," will be an iconographical study of the "Madonna with Cakes of Soap," formerly in the collection of Conrad Hilton.

Also of potential interest is this author's forthcoming study of some lesser-known traditions of medieval fashion: "From Rags to Witches -- Dressing for Success in the Later Middle Ages."

Notice: The author will appreciate information any reader might have that relates to a new topic of study on the history of ancient inns and hostels. Provisional title: "Steal this Towel: Hostels, the Ancient Art of Professional Hospitality."