ALL HALLOWS EVE: ‘The Adoration of the Trinity’ by Albrecht Durer (1511)
Halloween! It is a fun and freaky day filled with parties and parades, pranks and pumpkins and of course tricks and treats. It is with great pleasure that people attend horror gatherings dressed as vampires, werewolves, zombies, ghosts, skeletons, witches or other fancy characters. Party halls and homes are decorated with tombstones and coffins. For it is believed that on this fatal day the veil between this world and the next is lifted and all hell breaks loose!
However, just as the many masks worn by children and adults on October 31st, Halloween itself is guised under a long forgotten faith and a super enchanting history. Popularly attributed to the Celtic traditions, the Catholic origin of the festival can be traced to the papacy of Pope Gregory IV (827 – 844 A.D.) who instituted the feast of All Saints on the first day of November. In anticipation and preparation for this great liturgical celebration, a Vigil would be organised the night before. This vigil was known as ‘All Hallows Eve’ or ‘All Holy/Saintly Eve.’ Thus Halloween is simply a corruption of the original root word.
Beyond the modern macabre of the culture of death lies a Catholic celebration of great gusto and life. The spirit of this feast is fabulously rendered by the great German artist Albrecht Durer in one of his most celebrated paintings titled ‘The Adoration of the Trinity’. The massive altar piece was commissioned by a rich merchant, Matthaus Landauer, of Nuremberg in 1508 for a chapel dedicated to the Holy Trinity and All the Saints.
The composition though complex bears a symmetrical scheme. We are greeted at the terrestrial sphere by none other than the artist himself. The horizons of the earth-bound are bedecked with stone-clad medieval castles, dry desert regions, the empty sea and chilly glaciers. However the grass, quite literally, is greener on the other side (foreground). Our docent, Durer, stands at the peak of a hill, holding a wooden board bearing his credentials. His dwarfed being is juxtaposed against a massive multitude of heavenly hosts. It is the ‘New Jerusalem’, the ‘New Garden of Eden’ and the ‘Unending Sabbath’.
Well said, Love the beautiful depiction in the painting.