jothelibrarian: Pretty medieval manuscript of the day is this stunning illumination of the flig
jothelibrarian:Pretty medieval manuscript of the day is this stunning illumination of the flight into Egypt, from the Tres riches heures of Jean duc du Berry. I find it fascinating. For a while I was baffled, as I recognised the scene of the palm bowing down so the Virgin Mary could reach the fruit, a scene from the apocryphal Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew:CHAP. 20.– And it came to pass on the third day of their journey, while they were walking, that the blessed Mary was fatigued by the excessive heat of the sun in the desert; and seeing a palm tree, she said to Joseph: Let me rest a little under the shade of this tree. Joseph therefore made haste, and led her to the palm, and made her come down from her beast. And as the blessed Mary was sitting there, she looked up to the foliage of the palm, and saw it full of fruit, and said to Joseph: I wish it were possible to get some of the fruit of this palm. And Joseph said to her: I wonder that thou sayest this, when thou seest how high the palm tree is; and that thou thinkest of eating of its fruit. I am thinking more of the want of water, because the skins are now empty, and we have none wherewith to refresh ourselves and our cattle. Then the child Jesus, with a joyful countenance, reposing in the bosom of His mother, said to the palm: O tree, bend thy branches, and refresh my mother with thy fruit. And immediately at these words the palm bent its top down to the very feet of the blessed Mary; and they gathered from it fruit, with which they were all refreshed. And after they had gathered all its fruit, it remained bent down, waiting the order to rise from Him who bad commanded it to stoop. Then Jesus said to it: Raise thyself, O palm tree, and be strong, and be the companion of my trees, which are in the paradise of my Father; and open from thy roots a vein of water which has been hid in the earth, and let the waters flow, so that we may be satisfied from thee. And it rose up immediately, and at its root there began to come forth a spring of water exceedingly clear and cool and sparkling. And when they saw the spring of water, they rejoiced with great joy, and were satisfied, themselves and all their cattle and their beasts. Wherefore they gave thanks to God.Source: Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, chapter 20, from a nineteenth century edition of the text on the Wesleyan Society website.However what puzzled me about the image was that I couldn’t spot Jesus! It is hard to tell from Mary’s posture whether she is still pregnant, or just portrayed with the exaggerated hollowed-back that is so common in medieval portraits of women. I turned to my beloved facsimile of the book. The images in my book aren’t nearly as sharp as they are online, but it is still a delight to be able to turn the pages. There is an excellent commentary to the images at the back of the book, referencing each plate in turn. This quickly cleared up the mystery of the missing infant Jesus… he is in fact a teenager in this portrayal. Really I should have worked it out sooner, as he (third figure from the right) has a golden light on his back, from his halo. I suppose I was too focused on the idea of him being a newborn at the time of the flight into Egypt, and not a young man as he is in this depiction.Joseph stands, holding onto a frond of the tree, and he may be presenting Mary with a piece of fruit in his right hand (left as we look at the picture). Two girls sit to one side, apparently marvelling at the fruit they have been able to pluck from the tree. In the background, an ox and ass stand at rest, reminding us of the iconography of the nativity.On this page, beneath the text, is another story from the flight into Egypt, showing the miracle of the corn. I know I should hunt around for a better, more academic source than Wikipedia, but this sentence summarises what’s going on very well: “In the Miracle of the corn the pursuing soldiers interrogate peasants, asking when the Holy Family passed by. The peasants truthfully say it was when they were sowing their wheat seed; however the wheat has miraculously grown to full height”Finally, within the historiated initial D, there is a child, presumably Jesus, painted with light brushstrokes of gold.An extraordinarily sumptuous image, even by the standards of this book.Image source: Fol 57r - The flight into Egypt, Creative Commons licensed via Wikimedia Commons. -- source link
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