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Category: Advent

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Six Days of Advent: The Shepherds

The Annunciation to the Shepherds, Chinese. 20th century, Unknown Artist (and that’s a pity, because it’s a wonderful painting).

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”
Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,
“Glory to God in the highest heaven,
    and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”

The Annunciation to the Shepherds, 1663, Abraham Hondius. This is exactly what I see in my mind’s eye, including the fat little putti.
When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”
So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.
Annunciation to the Shepherds, first half of 17th century, Juan Dò. Until recently, this painting was unattributed, which is oddly appropriate, considering it’s a portrait of the lowest of the low.
Because of the time compression of the Bible, we get the impression that angels regularly zipped down to earth. I’m no theologian, but that doesn’t seem to be strictly true. There are a lot of visitations of angels in the early times recorded in Genesis—to Adam and Eve, to Hagar, to Sarah and Abraham, to Lot, to Jacob. Perhaps the most charming story of angels appears in Numbers, when Balaam is being such a jerk that the angel works through his donkey instead.
The visitations by angels in the Old Testament happened over thousands of years. On the other hand, during the brief period in which Jesus and his disciples lived, angels seemed awfully active. Angels were with Jesus at his birth, at his temptation in the desert, in the Garden of Gethsemane, when the tomb was empty, and at his ascension to heaven. Likewise, an angel appeared to Peter when in prison.
The Annunciation to the Shepherds, 1875, Jules Bastien-Lepage, who is most famous for his brilliant Jeanne d’Arc at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Mary, of course, received a visit from the angel Gabriel, and Joseph was spoken to by an angel. But those darn shepherds; now, that’s a weird story. If Joseph and Mary were nobodies in the Roman Empire, those shepherds were lower than dirt. And yet Caesar Augustus sat alone in his palace and a whole choir of angels came down to talk to the shepherds in Bethlehem instead.
Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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Six Days of Advent: The Census at Bethlehem

The Census at Bethlehem, 1566, by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. If this looks a little cold even for December in Antwerp, bear in mind that he was painting at the beginning of the Little Ice Age.
In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to their own town to register.
So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child…” (Luke 2:1-5)

The ruined castle in the far distance of Bruegel’s painting was based on the towers and gates of Amsterdam. 
The Jewish writer Titus Flavius Josephus recorded that Quirinius (Cyrenius), Legate of Syria, and Coponius, Prefect of Iudaea, were assigned to do a tax census of their respective provinces for the Empire in 6-7 CE:
Now Cyrenius, a Roman senator, and one who had gone through other magistracies, and had passed through them till he had been consul, and one who, on other accounts, was of great dignity, came at this time into Syria, with a few others, being sent by Caesar to be a judge of that nation, and to take an account of their substance. Coponius also, a man of the equestrian order, was sent together with him, to have the supreme power over the Jews. Moreover, Cyrenius came himself into Judea, which was now added to the province of Syria, to take an account of their substance, and to dispose of Archelaus’s money…

Chaos at the government office… the more things change, the more they stay the same.
In the Roman Empire, the natives were frequently revolting. Censuses—with the inevitable taxes that followed—caused rebellion from Gaul to Pannonia to Cappadocia. In Judea one Judas of Galilee led a violent resistance. His group, which Josephus labelled “The Zealots,” preached that God alone was the leader of Israel and urged a tax rebellion against Rome.
Citizen and provincial censuses were conducted differently, but that sacrificial bull at the right in the Census Frieze from Altar of Domitius Ahenobarbus (2nd century BC) might give some clue as to why the Jews found the practice so annoying.
In 2 Samuel 24, the young King David decided to take a census of his people over the objection of his general, Joab. God was clearly angered by this, but why? The answer may lie in David’s need to number his own strength instead of relying on God. However, a census is often a tool of a totalitarian government, as was certainly true with the Romans.
Bruegel painted the actors as his friends and contemporaries, underscoring the universality of the story. But to us, the Flemish Renaissance peasant seems as strange and marvelous as would Biblical-era Bethlehem.
The genealogies in Luke and Matthew are meant to spell out the Jesus’ legitimacy for the throne of David on both sides of his family. That is reinforced in the passage above, which also brings us (and the Holy Family) back to Micah 5:
But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah,
    though you are small among the clans of Judah,
out of you will come for me
    one who will be ruler over Israel,
whose origins are from of old,
    from ancient times.
Bruegel hid the main actors in his play in plain sight. Now that I’ve shown you the Holy Family, you can find them in the painting.
When it comes to artistic representations of the Holy Family’s arrival at Bethlehem, one painting stands above all others: Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Census at Bethlehem, 1566. As always, Bruegel hid the main figures of the play in plain sight. He subsumed them in the greater action of life, neatly reflecting that the drama at Bethlehem concerned an unknown family at the farthest outposts of the Empire. The players were not exotic; they were the faces of his friends and neighbors.

Arrival of the Holy Family in Bethlehem, 1543, Cornelis Massijs. Same schtick, totally different outcome.
Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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Six Days of Advent: The Annunciation to Mary

The Annunciation Triptych, 1440, by Rogier van der Weyden, has the compressed version from the Gospel of Luke, almost in comic-book form—Zecheriah praying in his lonely temple, Gabriel surprising Mary while she reads Scripture, Mary meeting with Elizabeth, in whose womb the young John the Baptist leaps in recognition.
The story of the Incarnation opens not with the Angel Gabriel’s appearance to Mary, but with his appearance to an old temple priest. Zechariah reacted with all-too-human skepticism to the idea that his post-menopausal wife would give birth to a son who “will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah.” 
Virgin of the Annunciation, 1512, by Matthias GrĂĽnewald, also shows Mary at her studies, but clothed in the most exuberant pleats, which reinforce the ecstatic nature of the moment.
A few months later, Gabriel returned to Israel, this time to Nazareth in Galilee, to talk to a young woman who was engaged to be married.
In contrast, Antonello da Messina’s Virgin Annunciate, 1476, is taking the news with remarkable composure.
 â€śDo not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”

The angel Gabriel in Sondro Botticelli’s 1481 fresco seems to be leaning over an imaginary wall for a friendly chat.
“How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”
The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. For no word from God will ever fail.”
 â€śI am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” (from Luke 1:26-38)

In Hendrick Terbrugghen’s 1624 Annunciation, Gabriel has dirty feet.
Mary understood that being pregnant by someone other than her betrothed threatened her engagement, her reputation, and even her life (as she could be stoned for adultery). The early Renaissance painters would have understood her predicament better than we, for whom illegitimacy is no big deal.  If the Baby Jesus were conceived today, sadly, nobody would much notice.
Albrecht Durer’s Annunciation from The Life of the Virgin, 1502, sets the scene in an amazing series of arches that suggest the very heavens themselves.

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!