MAGNIFICAT: THE COVER OF THE MONTH The Spreading of God’s Cloak by Pierre-Marie Dumont This exceptionally high-quality illuminated capital is the work of Sano di Pietro (c. 1405–1481), a famous …More
MAGNIFICAT: THE COVER OF THE MONTH
The Spreading of God’s Cloak by Pierre-Marie Dumont
This exceptionally high-quality illuminated capital is the work of Sano di Pietro (c. 1405–1481), a famous Sienese painter who did not consider it beneath him to illumine manuscripts occasionally.
As if through the porthole of an orbiting space station, the artist reveals to us the earth’s globe, as it was in the center of heaven on the fourth day of the world’s creation.
In the foreground, behold God clothed in majesty, robed in light. To form the heavens, he spreads his robe in the firmament, like a cosmic canopy (see Ps 104:1-9). He has already fashioned Ursa Major (the Great Bear), Orion, the Pleiades, the southern constellations, and myriads of their sisters (see Job 9:7-9). He has already fixed the number of the stars and given each one its name (see Ps 147:4). At the moment depicted, he has just created the sun to light and heat the earth:
Praised be you, my Lord, with all your creatures;
especially Brother Sun,
who is the day, and through whom you give us light.
And he is beautiful and radiant with great splendor,
and bears a likeness to you, Most High One.
Praised be you, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars;
in heaven you formed them
clear and precious and beautiful.1
All things were made by him and in him
Guided by a very sure theological sense, the artist refuses to depict God the Creator, our Father, according to the convention of his era, as a venerable old man with a beard. Is he not the invisible God, whom no one has ever seen, whom no one can claim to see without having died? That doesn’t matter; didn’t Jesus say: He who has seen me has seen the Father (Jn 14:9)? So the artist does not hesitate; he depicts Jesus Christ, inasmuch as he is the perfect image of his Father: His halo is marked with the cross, his face has the admirable features of the age at which he died, 33 years old, and the lining of his cloak, an earthen yellow, testifies to his incarnation. The choice of this way of depicting the Creator is perfectly consistent with the Genesis account in which God said and it was done: Jesus is the Logos, the Word of God who created the world.
A famous passage from Saint Paul’s Letter to the Colossians enlightens the artist’s brilliant decision to depict the Almighty Father in his dearly beloved Son:
He is the image of the invisible God,
the first-born of all creation;
for in him all things were created,
in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible,
whether thrones or dominions or principalities
or authorities—
all things were created through him and for him. (Col 1:15-16)
And here the question posed by Psalm 8 takes on an eternal dimension:
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
The moon and the stars which you have established;
What is man that you are mindful of him,
And the son of man that you care for him?
Yet you have made him little less than the angels,
And you have crowned him with glory and honor.
You have given him dominion over the works
of your hands;
You have put all things under his feet. (Ps 8:4-7)
The artist leaves to our meditation the fact that when he depicts God the Creator, he depicts him as one of us, a true man who really was born of a woman, who really lived among us and who really died. And with good reason.
1-- Saint Francis of Assisi, Canticle of the Sun.
God creating the stars (Historiated initial O), Sano di Pietro (1406–1481), Marmottan Monet Museum, Paris, France
The Spreading of God’s Cloak by Pierre-Marie Dumont
This exceptionally high-quality illuminated capital is the work of Sano di Pietro (c. 1405–1481), a famous Sienese painter who did not consider it beneath him to illumine manuscripts occasionally.
As if through the porthole of an orbiting space station, the artist reveals to us the earth’s globe, as it was in the center of heaven on the fourth day of the world’s creation.
In the foreground, behold God clothed in majesty, robed in light. To form the heavens, he spreads his robe in the firmament, like a cosmic canopy (see Ps 104:1-9). He has already fashioned Ursa Major (the Great Bear), Orion, the Pleiades, the southern constellations, and myriads of their sisters (see Job 9:7-9). He has already fixed the number of the stars and given each one its name (see Ps 147:4). At the moment depicted, he has just created the sun to light and heat the earth:
Praised be you, my Lord, with all your creatures;
especially Brother Sun,
who is the day, and through whom you give us light.
And he is beautiful and radiant with great splendor,
and bears a likeness to you, Most High One.
Praised be you, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars;
in heaven you formed them
clear and precious and beautiful.1
All things were made by him and in him
Guided by a very sure theological sense, the artist refuses to depict God the Creator, our Father, according to the convention of his era, as a venerable old man with a beard. Is he not the invisible God, whom no one has ever seen, whom no one can claim to see without having died? That doesn’t matter; didn’t Jesus say: He who has seen me has seen the Father (Jn 14:9)? So the artist does not hesitate; he depicts Jesus Christ, inasmuch as he is the perfect image of his Father: His halo is marked with the cross, his face has the admirable features of the age at which he died, 33 years old, and the lining of his cloak, an earthen yellow, testifies to his incarnation. The choice of this way of depicting the Creator is perfectly consistent with the Genesis account in which God said and it was done: Jesus is the Logos, the Word of God who created the world.
A famous passage from Saint Paul’s Letter to the Colossians enlightens the artist’s brilliant decision to depict the Almighty Father in his dearly beloved Son:
He is the image of the invisible God,
the first-born of all creation;
for in him all things were created,
in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible,
whether thrones or dominions or principalities
or authorities—
all things were created through him and for him. (Col 1:15-16)
And here the question posed by Psalm 8 takes on an eternal dimension:
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
The moon and the stars which you have established;
What is man that you are mindful of him,
And the son of man that you care for him?
Yet you have made him little less than the angels,
And you have crowned him with glory and honor.
You have given him dominion over the works
of your hands;
You have put all things under his feet. (Ps 8:4-7)
The artist leaves to our meditation the fact that when he depicts God the Creator, he depicts him as one of us, a true man who really was born of a woman, who really lived among us and who really died. And with good reason.
1-- Saint Francis of Assisi, Canticle of the Sun.
God creating the stars (Historiated initial O), Sano di Pietro (1406–1481), Marmottan Monet Museum, Paris, France
