Art/ Heritage

THE CHRISTMAS CANVAS: ‘The Sistine Madonna’ by Raphael da Urbino (1513)

 O Maiden will you be, the Mother of the Saviour

Your God has chosen you, to give the world His Son

His power will be your shield, His Spirit come upon you

And Mary bowed and said, ‘God’s will be done’

From the Annunciation to the Presentation, to the Passion, Death and Resurrection, it was Mary’s unconditional yes that bore and revealed to us the unconditional love of God. The Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church honours her divine maternity through the feast of the Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It is celebrated on the Octave of Christmas on January the 1st. It is therefore befitting today to dwell on a painting depicting the Mother of God (Greek ‘Theotokos’ meaning ‘God bearer’).

Who best can bring to us the soul of this subject than the art of Raphael? Even an amateur art lover can conjure the serene, impeccable, imperturbable, graceful, gentle, noble image of Raphael’s Madonnas. Through this concluding Christmas Canvas let’s contemplate on the last Madonna that Raphael painted titled ‘The Sistine Madonna’.

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THE CHRISTMAS CANVAS: ‘The Presentation at the Temple’ by Ambrogio Lorenzetti (1342)

Ambrogio Lorenzetti (1290 – 1348) was a medieval Italian painter of the Sienese school of art. Inspired by the Byzantine and the Classical genre, he developed a unique and absorbing style of painting. Disembarking from the rigid Gothic, he experimented with different kinds of perspectives, physiognomy and the illusion of depth. His artistic spirit sniffs soul through today’s canvas.

‘The Presentation at the Temple’ visually narrates to us an event from the early years of the life of Christ. The painting is housed at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. A masterpiece indeed, it was painted for the Chapel of San Crescenzio in the transept of the Cathedral of Siena. The painting illustrates an extra-ordinary interaction of artistic and liturgical details, an encounter between the old and the new.

A presentation ceremony in Jerusalem was accompanied by certain traditional prescriptions. The first: according to the Hebrew law after birthing a son a woman is considered impure for forty days. At the end of this period inorder to get rid of the impurity she has to bring an offering to the temple. The second: Every first born human or animal belongs to God. Thus inorder to win redemption, a clean animal would have to be sacrificed.

In conjunction to the Hebrew rituals, forty days after giving birth, Mary and Joseph brought Jesus to present him to the Lord. As they enter the solemnity of the temple, they are in for a surprise. Among the great coming and going of busy priests and anxious people stand the two elderly and devout Simeon and Anna. Simeon leans forward to hold Christ Child in his arms.

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THE CHRISTMAS CANVAS: ‘The Massacre of the Innocents’ by Peter Paul Rubens

 We are in the city of Antwerp in northern Belgium. It is a prosperous city of money, merchants and trade. In the 17th century, Antwerp was racked by civil war and tremendous tension between the Protestant Dutch and the Catholic crown of King Phillip II of Spain. The violent riots of the Reformation had trickled down to the Low Countries. Antwerp was sacked in 1576 wherein about 70,000 people died.

Jan Rubens was one of the many who fled the city to escape its fury. To him, in the city of Siegen, was born Peter Paul Ruben (1577). Shortly after the father’s death, the family moved back to Antwerp. Raised as a Roman Catholic, Ruben showed great interest in art. He took off to Italy for nearly a decade to imbibe the aura of the Renaissance, the Baroque and classical antiquity. He gathered a rich cultivation for art in the nursery of taste and talent.

Things worked well in his favour. Ruben’s return to Antwerp in 1609 coincided with the ‘Treaty of Antwerp’ that initiated the ‘twelve year truce’ between the warring parties. It trumpeted the entry of a Counter Reformation artist whose work persuaded, instructed, delighted and moved the people. Ruben was a painter of passion, a cultured humanist, a diplomat, an entrepreneur and one of the greatest story tellers in the history of art.

However his Christmas Canvas is not a pleasant site. It smells sinister and murder. The subject is that of the intense massacre of the innocents as ordered by King Herod who was on pins to keep his throne safe. This was after he had heard from the Magi that the prophesized newly born Messiah was to be the King of the Jews. Ruben masterfully associates this to the brutality of the social, political and religious conditions prevailing in Netherlands.

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THE CHRISTMAS CANVAS: ‘The Rest on the Flight to Egypt’ by Luc Olivier Merson (1879)

The first Christmas was far from comfort and tedium. Twelve days had not yet passed and adversity struck. Post the visit of the Magi the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and warned him about the impeding peril. ‘So Joseph got up taking the Child and his Mother with him left that night for Egypt.’ (Matthew 2:14). Fleeing with fear, they barely escaped Herod’s hounding army and a maniac plot of mass murder. 

Journeying, wandering, hoping, praying, they came a long way into the vastness of the open desert. As the wind whistled through the air, the coldness of the deep winter caught up with the pilgrim family. The little donkey shuddered as he plodded onwards with his precious load. Weariness soon weighed them down. They decided to stop and rest for the night.

As darkness poured over the desert, stars drilled down the sky. The wayfarers came across a solitary sphinx and decided to camp by its side. The air was clear. Yet the lonely travellers saw nothing, heard nothing. But something throbbed, something gleamed. It was the stark horizon that beamed for joy on having the Holy Family in its midst that holy night.

The sphinx shared in its cheer. It graciously obliged to serve as a chaise lounge to the Virgin Mary and the Christ child. As the Madonna and child fell asleep within its rest, the Sphinx raised its head blissfully glorifying God. For that night it lost not itself in the shadows of the constant solitary darkness. Christ Child was the source of divine light. 

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THE CHRISTMAS CANVAS: ‘The Adoration of the Magi’ by Gentile da Fabriano (1423)

From the magnificence of the Medici we move to the splendour of the Strozzi; both illustrious bankers of Florence. The Florentine Republic was a medieval and early modern state. It had no kings rather it was ruled by a wealthy class of merchants and the guilds. Their enormous accumulation of wealth soon disappeared in art. The ‘Adoration of the Magi’ by Gentile da Fabriano spells one such accumulation through its extravagant opulence.

The subject is that of the famous Three Kings. Bearing gifts they traversed through distant lands inorder to honour and adore the newly born Christ Child. Their adventure begins in the background. Very inventively the artist characterizes their journey as a continuous narrative through the gilded Gothic arches. 

The first scene decorating the first arch depicts the discovery of the bright star in the East. The brightness of the star illuminated their hearts as they set out for Jerusalem. This is illustrated in the second scene. However there they encounter the villain! Herod, the paranoid and treacherous king, asked them to report back once they find the Messiah. From there the Magi lead their retinue to the small town of Bethlehem as displayed at the upper right corner.

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