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Morgengabe |
Description of the painting
A morning gift was originally understood to be a wedding gift from the husband to his wife after the wedding night. In the past, this wedding custom was intended to provide financial security for the bride in the event that she became a widow at an early age. The term has gone a little out of fashion in Western countries but is occasionally used for a gift given by the husband to the wife and/or by the wife to the husband on the wedding day. In European royal houses, there used to even be fixed amounts of money for the morning gift.
In Islamic law, the morning gift still plays an important role in many countries today. It is based on the Koran, which contains the sura: "And give women their morning gift (so that they can dispose of it freely)!" There are legal regulations that play a role particularly in divorces.
My picture shows a bride holding a dragon-like animal on her lap as a gift. Depicting women with wild animals on their laps has a long tradition in art. Depictions of the mythological unicorn are particularly famous. In the Physiologus, the unicorn is described as a shy creature that can only be tamed in the lap of a pure virgin.
Another mythological animal is the dragon, which has negative connotations in Western cultures and positive ones in East Asian cultures.
A woman can tame the unicorn by giving up her sexuality. Marriage was introduced, among other things, to tame sexuality, which over the centuries of the last millennium led to the almost complete eradication of a woman's own desire. With the sexual revolution, women gained more freedom, but they should always relate to the man and his desires. My dragon stands for the empowerment of women in a couple's relationship that is more oriented towards female desires.
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