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Mary, Untier of Knots or Mary, Undoer of Knots is the name of both a Marian devotion and a Baroque painting (German: ''Wallfahrtsbild'' or ''Gnadenbild'') which represents that devotion. The painting by Johann Georg Melchior Schmidtner, of around 1700, is in the Catholic pilgrimage church of St. Peter am Perlach, otherwise known as the Perlach church, in Augsburg, Bavaria, Germany. Pope Francis saw the image while in Germany as a student and promoted her veneration in Latin America. ==Painting== The painting, executed in the Baroque style by Johann Georg Melchior Schmidtner (1625-1707), shows the Blessed Virgin Mary standing on the crescent moon (the usual way of depicting Mary under her title of the Immaculate Conception), surrounded by angels and with the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove hovering above her circle of stars as she unties knots into a long strip and at the same time rests her foot on the head of a "knotted" snake. The serpent represents the devil, and her treatment of him fulfills the prophecy in Genesis 3:15: "I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel."§〔Douay-Rheims Bible, 1899 Edition〕 Below are shown a human figure and his dog accompanying a much smaller angel. This scene is often interpreted as Tobias with his dog and the Archangel Raphael traveling to ask Sara to be his wife. The concept of Mary untying knots is derived from a work by St. Irenaeus of Lyons, ''Adversus haereses'' (''Against Heresies''). In Book III, Chapter 22, he presents a parallel between Eve and Mary, describing how "the knot of Eve's disobedience was loosed by the obedience of Mary. For what the virgin Eve had bound fast through unbelief, this did the virgin Mary set free through faith."〔(Irenaeus, ''Against Heresies'', III, 22 )〕 The two small figures have also been interpreted as a representation of Wolfgang Langenmantel, the grandfather of the benefactor, guided in his distress by a guardian angel to Father Jakob Rem in Ingolstadt.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Mary Untier of Knots」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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