The Birth of John the Baptist

Luke 1:57–66

Works of art by Jacopo Salimbeni, Lorenzo Salimbeni, Rogier van der Weyden and Unknown Byzantine artist

Great in the Sight of the Lord

This scene from the left-hand panel of Rogier van der Weyden’s St John Triptych, focuses on the significance of the naming. In a deep space depicting a well-appointed Netherlandish interior, including a sideboard displaying costly brassware and a large bed with red hangings, Elizabeth is at rest, barely visible under the bedclothes as she is tucked in by a solicitous attendant.

Far more prominent are the large foreground figures, who occupy a liminal space between the viewer and the chamber. They are Zechariah, writing the name of the Baptist, and the Virgin. According to the apocryphal Golden Legend (Chapter 86) Mary remained with Elizabeth until she was delivered, to assist and ‘receive the Baptist when he was born’. Rogier shows Mary holding the new-born infant against her own womb bearing the unborn Christ, underscoring the spiritual and scriptural relationship between the Baptist and Jesus. The baby is loosely draped in a white napkin that perhaps alludes to a shroud, a reminder of his future death.

Mary and Zechariah stand before a gothic portal decorated with fictive sculptures depicting pairs of Apostles, and in the archivolt, scenes from Luke’s Gospel that elucidate the main image. At bottom left, Gabriel appears to Zechariah in the Temple, announcing that the elderly Elizabeth will conceive a son, to be called John, ‘who shall be great in the sight of the Lord’ (1:5–17). Doubting this, Zechariah is struck dumb, to the amazement of those who witness him leaving the Temple in the second scene (1:18–22). Next are seen the Betrothal of the Virgin, the Annunciation, and the Visitation (1:26–55), when the Baptist leaps in Elizabeth’s womb. Finally, the Nativity of Christ (2:7), signalling the beginning of the new era, which Zechariah, his lips unsealed, prophesies. The gaze he exchanges with Mary perhaps represents the moment when he recognizes his son’s role in the history of salvation.

References

Panofsky, Erwin. 1966. Early Netherlandish Painting, vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), pp. 280–82

Kemperdick, Stefan and Jochen Sander (eds). 2009. The Master of Flemalle and Rogier van der Weyden (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz), pp. 352–57

Christ’s Precursor

Commentary by Paula Nuttall

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This scene is part of a cycle of the Life of the Baptist on the walls of an oratory dedicated to the saint, home to a prestigious lay confraternity in Urbino. It is set in a luxurious contemporary bedroom with a coffered wooden ceiling and a magnificent bed, in which sits Elizabeth, reaching for her baby, surrounded by female attendants.

Bedecked with a sumptuous, patterned textile, and gold-embroidered pillows, the bed has a fancy wooden tester, and along its base a chest with decorative inlay that also serves as a seat or step. Zechariah is perched on this, penning John’s name with the aid of an inkwell held by a small boy.

It is the Virgin Mary, however, who dominates the scene, tenderly holding the tightly swaddled infant. This reflects the version of events recounted in medieval texts including the thirteenth-century Golden Legend, in which Mary assists at the birth. Her inclusion here, and her pose, strongly reminiscent of images of the Virgin and Child, underscores the Baptist’s role as the precursor of Christ.

Outside the bedchamber, in a vine-trellised garden, John’s circumcision is performed by a priest, in the presence of male onlookers. The inclusion of this scene, although unusual, has narrative and theological significance. It is the coming of the priest to perform this rite on the eighth day that prompts Elizabeth to declare the baby’s name to be John, and Zechariah to confirm this in writing, thereby affirming his faith in God. The depiction of male and female witnesses in both scenes alludes to the fact that this episode permits wider public recognition of John’s divine destiny.

The dog may be an allusion to later, often hostile, Christian attitudes towards circumcision, which would become nugatory in the new messianic era heralded by the Baptist.

References

Miller, James E. 1993. ‘The Birth of John the Baptist and the Gospel to the Gentiles’, Andrews University Seminary Studies 31.3: 195–97

Minardi, Mauro. 2008. Lorenzo e Jacopo Salimbeni (Olschki: Florence)

A Royal Byzantine Birth

Commentary by Paula Nuttall

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Produced in the Imperial scriptorium at Constantinople, this full-page illumination is from a tetraevangelion—a volume containing the four Gospels. It was made for a member of the imperial family, probably the Byzantine Emperor John II Komnenos, his wife Eirene, or their son Alexios. It occupies a privileged position at the opening of Luke’s Gospel, opposite an image of the Evangelist.

Elizabeth, reclining on a draped bed, dominates the scene. She is attended by two maidservants, one offering her food in an elaborate golden dish, the other bearing a peacock-feather fan. The latter looks over her shoulder to where, at top right, three female attendants appear to be discussing the birth. Below, a woman prepares the infant Baptist’s cradle, a magnificent object decorated with architectural forms, its legs resting on a pair of rockers. Another woman (or perhaps the same one, seen twice) pours water from a golden ewer into the large gilded and decorated basin in which the baby sits, while her companion prepares to bathe him, and in a magnificent lion-headed brazier, logs give off red flames. Above, in a space outside Elizabeth’s chamber, Zechariah writes John’s name, attended by three men, who, like the women directly above them, are discussing the event.

The different episodes can be read as disparate scenes, divided by architectural elements, yet they are unified by the use of repeated colours, predominantly red, blue, and white. Elizabeth stands out partly by virtue of her large size, but also on account of her dark-hued draperies. The abundance of gold leaf, and the splendid furniture, golden vessels, lavish textiles, and peacock fan reflect the status of the book’s owners, but may additionally allude to the Baptist’s own status as a member of the Jewish elite. Zechariah was a priest, and Elizabeth a descendant of Aaron; John’s birth was announced in the Temple, the holiest place of its cultic centre.

This makes his eventual departure for the wilderness and his ministry there the more dramatic by contrast.

References

Anderson, Jeffrey C. 1991. ‘The Illustrated Sermons of James the Monk: Their Dates, Order and Place in the History of Byzantine Art’, Viator 22: 69–120

Stornaiolo, Cosimo. 1895. Codices Urbinates graeci Bibliothecae Vaticanae descripti (Rome: Vatican Press)

Faith and Prophecy

Comparative commentary by Paula Nuttall

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The story of John the Baptist’s birth occurs uniquely in the Gospel of Luke (1:57–66). It is intertwined, literally and metaphorically, with the birth of Christ, which it prefigures and parallels. Both infants are miraculously conceived, by women respectively ‘barren’ (v.7) and a virgin, to fulfil God’s plan for the salvation of humankind. Underscoring his role as Christ’s ‘forerunner’, John’s nativity immediately precedes that of Christ (2:1–20). His role as precursor is also explicit in the words of his father Zechariah, which immediately follow the account of John’s naming and birth: ‘Thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Most High; For thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to make ready his ways, to give salvation unto his people’ (1:76–77, Authorised Version).

Although a discrete episode, the significance of the birth of the Baptist is only fully understood within the wider Gospel narrative. Viewers of the Byzantine miniature and Lorenzo and Jacopo Salimbeni’s fresco would, respectively, have experienced the Birth scene as part of the Gospel text, and as part of a pictorial cycle of the Life of the Baptist on the walls of the oratory. For viewers of Rogier van der Weyden’s altarpiece, the episodes depicted in the architectural sculpture painted on the portal flesh out the story, providing important narrative context. Particularly relevant are the first two episodes: the angel Gabriel telling the childless Zechariah that his elderly wife will conceive a son, to be called John, and the incredulous Zechariah leaving the Temple after he is rendered mute. Also shown is the Visitation, when Mary visits Elizabeth. It is on hearing Mary’s greeting that Elizabeth recognizes her as the mother of God; the baby in her own womb ‘leaps’ and she is ‘filled with the Holy Ghost’ (1:41, Authorised Version). Taken together, these episodes are stories about faith: Zechariah is temporarily punished for his disbelief; Elizabeth praised for keeping faith: ‘Blessed is she that believed’ (1:45, Authorised Version).

Faith is also at the heart of the naming episode, which is depicted in all three images. When Zechariah still cannot speak, it is Elizabeth who declares the infant’s name to be John, rather than agreeing to have him called after his father, as was customary. Likewise, it is immediately after Zechariah confirms the name in writing that his lips are unsealed. Recognizing the miracle of John’s birth, he is enabled to foretell his son’s divinely appointed role (1:67–79) in words that evoke those of Isaiah (40:3), and which recur in Gospel narratives of the adult Baptist (Matthew 3:3; John 1:23). Zechariah’s words were later adopted into the Latin liturgy as the Benedictus.

In each of these artworks, John’s birth is depicted in contemporary settings that suggest high social status. This is possibly an allusion to the status of Zechariah the priest, but probably also reflects that of the patrons. The most exalted is the opulent scene painted for the Byzantine imperial family, with its golden bathtub and magnificent cradle. Although less obviously extravagant, the settings depicted by the Salimbeni brothers and Rogier van der Weyden likewise evoke fifteenth-century Italian and Netherlandish elite residences, with their costly textiles and furniture, and (in Rogier’s painting) a chimneybreast and partially glazed windows. Dress similarly conveys status. In the Salimbeni fresco, Mary wears garments that suggest luxury silks: a patterned blue mantle, and a white dress embellished with gold motifs; in Rogier’s panel she wears a fur-lined dress over an underdress of red velvet and gold woven silk—a type of textile worn by royalty. In all three images, Elizabeth’s head is heavily veiled and (in Salimbeni and Rogier) wimpled, as was appropriate for an older woman, just as Zechariah is shown a venerable, grey-bearded man, underscoring the miracle of their parenthood.

The iconography of the Birth of the Baptist is exemplified by the twelfth-century Byzantine Master’s image, with its domestic details of the bedchamber, the attendant women, the bathing of the baby, and the figure of Zechariah sitting apart, penning the name. By the late Middle Ages, in Western Europe, texts other than the Gospel had begun to enrich its representation, as in the examples by the Salimbeni brothers and Rogier, whose images include Mary. Luke is ambiguous regarding Mary’s presence at the birth, saying simply that she stayed with Elizabeth for three months and then returned home. Her presence was debated by theologians including St Ambrose and the Venerable Bede, both of whom accepted it, as did more popular (and later) writers such Jacobus de Voragine, the author of the Golden Legend, and the Pseudo-Bonaventure, who described how Mary cradled the baby in her arms and kissed him. Her presence in these paintings reinforces the message of the birth of the Baptist as the prelude to the nativity and ministry of Christ.

Next exhibition: Luke 2:7