In the Virgin’s womb he assumed a mortal flesh, and in that mortal flesh completed his passion. (Leo the Great Tract. 48.1)

There are obvious chronological and cultural differences between these three works. However, they have similarities of interpretation that shed light on how the passage to which they refer, Hebrews 10 (and especially vv.4–10), was read across the seven centuries of Western Christian tradition, from the Iconoclast controversy to the Lutheran Reform in the early sixteenth century.

The first and most significant is a clear sense of relationship between the Incarnation and the Passion: between the moment when Christ ‘came into the world’ (Hebrews 10:5) and that in which he left it. The placement of the Nativity at the epicentre of Paschal I’s cross (817–824); Mary in the Hodegetria Madonna (mid-thirteenth century) indicating both the Child and his future death; and the proximity of the infant in Simeon’s arms to the altar behind Simeon in Bernardino Luini’s fresco (1525), all illustrate the theology of Hebrews 10:4–10 and remind us of Leo the Great’s succinct formula:

The only reason for which the Son of God was born was to make the crucifixion possible. (Tract. 48.1)

Another common feature of these works is the transversal reading of the passage from Hebrews, which colours various subjects. In the Cross of Paschal I, these subjects encompass the Annunciation (since the ‘reason’ for Christ’s taking flesh was to die in the flesh); the Visitation (at which moment John the Baptist, future prophet of Christ’s sacrifice, exulted); the Adoration of the Magi (for the gift of myrrh symbolized Christ’s burial); the Presentation in the Temple (when Simeon prophesied the future hostility to Christ); and the Baptism (sign of the other, still-to-come ‘baptism’ of the Passion). The scene in the left arm of the cross, Joseph and Mary’s Journey to Bethlehem, recalls that there would be ‘no place for them in the inn’ (Luke 2:7), suggesting the exclusion to which the Child was destined from birth; and the depiction of Christ as a child, in the Baptism, underlines that although this anticipation of the Passion took place in early adulthood it is related to the Saviour’s childhood acceptance of his future death.

The Madonna Hodegetria makes clear how, in the great period of Marian theology and iconography, the ‘sword’ prophesied by Simeon was read as her maternal awareness of the Passion from her Son’s childhood on. The scroll in the Child’s left hand and his blessing right hand reassert once again the bond between Incarnation and Passion (both Incarnation and Passion are the intertwined subjects of prophecy and both are inseparably conduits of blessing). Meanwhile, the improbable maturity of little Jesus in this painting—his intelligent gaze and high, furrowed, brow—suggest the Child’s full awareness of what awaits him. It is moreover useful to note that, reading the painting from left to right, this self-aware Child is seen before the much smaller images of himself as an adult in the Passion scenes at our right, as if to insist that the later unfolding of events depended on his acceptance of death when he ‘came into the world’ (Hebrews 10:5).

Finally, in Luini’s fresco, several additional references point to Christ’s future Passion: the young man with a lamb on his shoulders behind the woman bearing a basket with two turtle doves, reminds us that the doves were an offering for sin, or to purify a woman who had given birth, in substitution for the preferred animal of sacrifice, which was a lamb (Leviticus 5:7; 12:8). The lamb or turtle doves were offered in token of a first-born child’s consecration to YHWH (Exodus 13:1), required by God of the Chosen People in the book of Exodus a mere thirty-one verses after YHWH ‘smote all the first-born in the land of Egypt’ (Exodus 12:29). The sacrifice of the lamb thus took the place of sacrificing the first-born son, but in Christ’s case the terrible original sense of Scripture would be fulfilled, for he became the Lamb of God. This new fullness of the ancient Law is suggested by St Joseph, in the left foreground—a figure of the Church—who indicates the Christ Child to a woman with an overturned book, who represents the Synagogue. And Simeon’s prophecy of hostility toward Christ is confirmed by the scene in the middle distance, above the youth with the lamb: the Flight into Egypt, when Joseph, Mary, and baby Jesus fled Herod’s persecution.

References

Leo the Great. Tract. 48. 1973. Leo Magnus Tractatus septem et nonaginta, Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 138A, ed. by Antoine Chavasse (Turnhout: Brepols), pp. 279–280

Verdon, Timothy. 2005. Mary in Western Art, Pope John Paul cultural center, Washington D.C. (New York: Hudson Hills Press)

_____. 2006. Cristo nell’arte europea, (Milan: Monadori Electa Spa)

_____. (ed.). 2010. Gesù. Il corpo, il volto nell’arte (Milan