RISING FROM THE RUINS
Today, Epiphany is celebrated, the feast
day commemorating the visit of the Magi to Bethlehem. This holiday has been
very popular since the first stages of Christianity. The religious can identify
themselves with the Magi, admiring and honoring the newborn child Jesus. In
art, the depiction of the nativity scene in sculpture or painting provides the
believer with the suggestion of a direct, almost physical contact with the son
of God.
It was therefore all the more regrettable
that the description of this episode in the Bible is rather sparse. Gradually, the need arose to expand the
biblical history of the Epiphany with more story lines and details. The added story elements were partly derived from the Apocryphal Gospels (Christian texts which aren’t part of the
accepted canon of Scripture), others were derived from prophecies and events from the Old Testament which were assumed to
be a pre-figuration of those in the New Testament. The ox and the donkey
entered the birth house and the Magi (wise men) developed into kings, with a
specific appearance and carrying certain gifts.
Especially in the later Middle Ages, books elaborating
on the birth and life of Jesus, like The Golden Legend of the
thirteenth-century writer Jacobus de Voragine, were outright bestsellers.
Although the Church was initially skeptical about these expansions of the
biblical story, she also saw the positive influence on the piety of the
faithful. For artists, the stories were a desirable source of inspiration.
This beautiful Epiphany from ca. 1510 by
Jan Gossaert is typical of the late medieval perception of the story. For
example, the ruinous setting is derived from medieval sourcebooks. They
describe how Mary gave birth on the remnants of the dilapidated palace of King
David, Jesus’ ancestor. It is an interpretation of a prophecy by Amos in the
Old Testament: ‘In that day I will restore the fallen house of David. I will
repair its damaged walls. From the ruins I will rebuild it and restore its
former glory.’ The metaphor is clear: the Old Order is destroyed, and now a new
era can begin.
(text: Maarten Levendig)
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