Crowing Rooster

by Sarah Loft

Title

Crowing Rooster

Artist

Sarah Loft

Medium

Photograph - Photograph With Added Texture

Description

I photographed this metal bird in the German town of Eltville. It was attached to a rooftop and struck me as a lovely bit of folk art.

Per Wikipedia: In the sixth century, it is reputed that Pope Gregory I declared the cock the emblem of Christianity saying the rooster was "the most suitable emblem of Christianity", being "the emblem of St Peter". Some say that it was as a result of this that the cock began to be used as a weather vane on church steeples, and some a Papal enactment of the ninth century ordered the figure of the cock to be placed on every church steeple. It is known that Pope Leo IV had the figure of the cock placed on the Old St. Peter's Basilica or old Constantinian basilica and has served as a religious icon and reminder of Peter's denial of Christ since that time, with some churches still having the rooster on the steeple today. Alternative theories about the origin of weathercocks on church steeples are that it was an emblem of the vigilance of the clergy calling the people to prayer, that it was derived from the Goths and is only possibly a Christian symbol, and that it is an emblem of the sun.

In the Bayeux Tapestry of the 1070s, originally of the Bayeux Cathedral and now exhibited at Musée de la Tapisserie de Bayeux in Bayeux, Normandy, there is a depiction of a man installing a rooster on Westminster Abbey.

Per Wikipedia: Eltville am Rhein is a town in the Rheingau-Taunus-Kreis in the Regierungsbezirk of Darmstadt in Hesse, Germany. It lies on the German Timber-Frame Road (Fachwerkstrasse). Eltville is the biggest town in the Rheingau.

Note: The watermark will not appear on the print you purchase.

Uploaded

May 3rd, 2017

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