Curiosa: Hello, mudder ...

Cataloged an incunable today, a minor work by Savonarola, which features two woodcuts of the crucifixion and a third that depicts Christ meeting his mother on the Via Dolorosa, except that it's not all that dolorous. On the left we have a grumpy BVM, swathed from head to foot in a burqa, gesticulating at the Christ, her admonitory fingers inches from his robe. (An equally grumpy man, his nose in danger of being squashed flat by her halo, is shoving his way into frame behind her: "Move it, lady! I can't see!") The Christ, by contrast, looks positively insouciant, cross balanced jauntily on one shoulder as he glances back at his mother over the other, right eyebrow quirked in what I cannot help but describe as an O RLY? expression. Do we have to go through this "lamb to the slaughter" nonsense every time I leave? he seems to be asking. I'll be back before you know it -- three days, tops!

And this, my friends, is why I'll be doing hard time in Purgatory some day ...