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Fünffaltigkeit (Quinity) |
Description of the painting
The oil painting "Quinity" belongs to my series of family life. It shows a family of five, all looking at the viewer in a friendly way. Behind them, in a dense thicket of leaves, are also five goblins, a species of lemurs, with big red eyes looking over the heads of the people. Together, the red staring eyes form a triangle. This refers to the representation of the all-seeing God in Christian iconography.
Lemurs belong to the suborder of primates that includes Homo sapiens. So, it is not so far-fetched that the all-seeing God is represented by lemurs. For we find in the Old Testament the sentence: “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them“. Ironically, the image alludes to human's presumed superiority over nature, even though humans themselves are ultimately members of the primate suborder.
The scientific name for lemurs is Lemuriformes, from the Latin lemures "shadow spirits of the dead" and forma "form". So, the picture also shows the family in the circle of their ancestors.
That this interpretation was not forgotten until modern times is shown in Goethe's Faust II. There, the lemurs are summoned to Faust's funeral:
MEPHISTOPHELES as the overseer in advance.
Come on! Come on! In here, in here!
You trembling lemurs,
Of ligaments, sinews, and bones
Patchy half-natures!
The term quinity can be found in an article by Kantorowicz which discusses a drawing in the British Museum.
Description: Quinity of Winchester, c. 1012 to 1020, Cotton Ms. Titus D XXVII, fol. 75v, British Museum
Date: 1012 to 1020
Reference: Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The Quinity of Winchester, The Art Bulletin, vol. 29, no. 2, 1947, pp. 73-85
Artist: unknown master, c. 1012-1020