The Croatian Post has been illuminating the Christmas holiday regardless of how it has been manifested and celebrated. This year's Croatian Christmas stamp motif is dedicated to the delicate genre of holy cards.
The honour accorded to the icons is passed on to their prototypes.This was established at the Second Council of Nicaea (787 AD), which marked a victory for the iconodules - the supporters of the veneration of religious icons - over their detractors the iconoclasts, who viewed the veneration of (holy) images and objects as blasphemy. The conclusion was reached that God was unimaginable as a deity and could be shown in images depicting his corporeal form.
There is an entire history behind the transition from an icon to a holy card. The format needed to be reduced in size, so that it could enter the everyday lives of ordinary people. Looking at icons was supposed to provide aid, comfort and the reinvigoration of faith. Since the Early Middle Ages, pictures have been created in monasteries for personal use by copying images from breviaries and other notable works. The first holy cards as we know them today were mentioned in the 14th century and the one depicting St. Christopher was the first to be documented in 1423. Their production underwent a dynamic technical shift and was steered towards increased reproducibility, ranging from crude woodcuts, followed by lithographs and chromolithographs to the more refined 18th-century techniques such as canivet (hand-cut paper lace; a canif is a small pointed knife similar to a chisel) or machine techniques such as paper lace printing, the addition of various relief and collage ornaments and ultimately photographs and mass reproduction procedures. The first holy cards were used for protection and their owners would carry them or place them on the doors of houses and stables, while their edges were devoured by the infirm as though they were medicine, which is why the older artefacts are often damaged. It was not until later that they would become memorabilia. Many of the pivotal moments in life - births, Baptisms, Holy Communions, Confirmations, weddings, First Masses, deaths - found their place in the symbolic or realistic iconography of the holy cards. Recto - holy image, verso - intimate note. Lulled and forgotten in old prayer books, sticking drawers and heirlooms sifted for their utility, these cards have now attained the status of coveted historical and artistic testaments and objects of the collectors' desires.
The card used by the Croatian Post to celebrate this year's Christmas holiday honours the aforementioned canivettechnique, which dates back to the 19th century. This printing process emerged around 1840 and the card was made soon after. It evokes the romantic atmosphere of the mid-19th century, while also revealing deeper layers of memory. The stylised physiognomy with the tiny mouth and the Napoleon haircut of baby Jesus offers reminiscences from as early as the 18th century. Memories of the Biedermeier period are preserved in the rose wreaths, as well as in the composure, tranquillity and serenity of the angelic figures. The curls and colours of the clothes are romantic. While early Historicism is present in the ornamental lace base of the image.
The card was made in Einsiedeln, a town in Switzerland renowned for its statue of the Black Madonna at the Baroque-style Einsiedeln Abbey, in the printing house of the brothers Charlesa and Nicolas Benziger, who were first mentioned as early as the 1830s. It bears witness not only to the high-quality of the imports from the great wide world, but also to the network of pilgrimage routes that used to connect Europe.
Baby Jesus barely touches the ground in this card. It should be noted that his manger is covered with grain and not straw; poverty has taken its toll. Yet he is bereft of anything that we associate with humans - apart from the grain, that metaphor for itself, that bread - and is left alone with the angels: to his own perennial destiny. He has barely arrived and yet is still there where he will return. And, as the card implies, take us with him.
Željka Čorak, PhD, Scientific
Advisor – Emeritus at the Institute of Art History
