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(“When in doubt, abstain”). A third, which Martha embroidered three years later, was a favorite saying of Charcot: “One must have faith.”50
Still another (and especially important) involvement of Freud with Christian themes was expressed in these engagement letters to Martha Bernays. In a letter written rather early in the engagement, on December 20, 1883, Freud recounted a visit that he made with his half-brother Philipp to the city of Dresden: “Right next to the castle we discovered a wonderful cathedral, then a theater, and finally a spacious building…it was the so-called Zwinger which houses all of Dresden’s museums and art treasures.”51 Freud admired and wrote movingly of three paintings he saw there. The first was Holbein’s Madonna (see Figure 3-2): The Madonna holds the boy in her arms and gazes down on the worshippers with such a holy expression…. The Madonna herself is not exactly beautiful—the eyes protrude, the nose is long and narrow—but she is a true queen of heaven such as the pious German mind dreams of.52 Freud then described the second painting, Raphael’s Madonna (see Figure 3-3): Now I happened to know that there was also a Madonna by Raphael there and I found her at last in an equally chapel-like room and a crowd of people in silent devotion in front of her. You are sure to know her, the Sistina…. The painting emanates a magic beauty that is inescapable, and yet I have a serious objection to raise against the Madonna herself. Holbein’s Madonna is neither a woman nor a girl, her exultation and sacred humility silence any question concerning her specific designation. Raphael’s Madonna, on the other hand, is a girl, say sixteen years old; she gazes out on the world with such a fresh and innocent expression, half against my will she suggested to me a charming, sympathetic nursemaid, not from the celestial world but from ours.53 As for the third and final painting, Titian’s Maundy Money (see Figure 3-4), Freud wrote: But the picture that really captivated me was the “Maundy Money” by Titian…. This head of Christ, my darling, is the only one that enables even people like ourselves to imagine that such a person did exist. Indeed, it seemed that I was compelled to believe in the eminence of this man because the figure is so convincingly presented. And nothing divine about it, just a noble human countenance, far from beautiful yet full of seriousness, intensity, profound thought and deep inner passion…. I would love to have gone away with it, but there were too many people about,… so I went away with a full heart.54 Freud’s heart was filled almost certainly from springs that went back to his Freiberg days and to the nanny whom he loved and who took him to so many churches. All the cues were right. He was with his half-brother Philipp, whom he had rarely seen after leaving Freiberg—the brother involved with his nanny’s arrest and sudden disappearance. He was |