STRANGE... STUFF...
We were visiting the Vatican museum last week, and in one of the first rooms in the Pinacotek I stumbled across some small narrative paintings by an unknown Tuscan artist. In two of the motifs I found that the women had some strange... stuff around their neck. It looks like a shawl with a ball in each end. The pattern and general shape of the shawl (if it IS a shawl) is rather conventional, so I wonder if they're meant to be carrying anything in it? It looks like they're "clasping" around something in the bottom of the shawl. But how - and what? Does it have a specific religious or practical meaning?
Maybe it's even intended to be the same woman, even though she's not quite identical in both paintings?
*ponders*
Any wild or less wild guesses?