The sixth chapter of Joshua narrates the fall of Jericho. It is the culmination of a campaign that begins in the second chapter when Joshua dispatches spies to enter the city walls and that ends with a massacre: ‘Then they utterly destroyed all in the city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and asses’ (Joshua 6:21).

Despite such violence, which results in the total obliteration of Jericho, depictions of Joshua 6 seldom dwell on the Israelite general’s brutality and ruthlessness, as all three artworks in this exhibition confirm. Indeed, two of them—the mosaic from Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome and the baptistery doors in Florence—are part of larger cycles that have quite different agendas and emphases.

The mosaic sequence takes the narrative arc of Joshua 1–6 and reduces its key motifs and characters—the figures of Joshua, his spies and Rahab, the castle-like city of Jericho, and the Ark of the Covenant—to a series of visible patterns, easily recognised from far below in the nave. The emphasis on Rahab is notable. Panel 15, which is illustrated here, includes two different viewpoints, both of which pivot on her, but from diametrically opposed positions. In the lower scene, the procession of the Ark around the walls is viewed as if from within the city. The viewer’s gaze would seem to be elided with that of Rahab. By contrast, in the upper scene in which the walls collapse, she stands at the centre of the composition, looking out.

The designer has chosen to emphasize the individual who, together with her kin, was spared, rather than stress the violence and destruction that Joshua unleashed on the people of Jericho. In this papal basilica dedicated to Mary, whose cult was reaching new heights, Rahab’s preservation may subtly link with Mary’s. Though a brothel was Rahab’s home, she was, for theologians of the early Church, a ‘rose of piety hidden in thorns’ (Chrysostom Homilies on Repentance and Almsgiving 7.5.15–16): a possible precursor of the ‘Mystic Rose’ preserved in purity to be the mother of God.

Like the mosaic, Lorenzo Ghiberti’s depiction too is relatively free of horror. The walls come down, as the Ark, the trumpeters, priests, and Israelites process around it, but there is no suggestion of the events that are to ensue.

Both this bronze relief and the mosaic at Santa Maria Maggiore ‘read’ from bottom upwards, though here, within the terms of the artist’s brilliantly realized illusion, from the foreground backwards as well. The fall of Jericho is, in other words, consigned to the background. Ghiberti gives far greater prominence to the scene in which the Ark is carried across the Jordan and the Israelites collect stones, emphasizing events that led up to the siege, than to the violence of the sack itself. This focus might seem surprising, especially since Joshua was understood as a model of righteous military action in early fifteenth-century Florence (Bloch 2016). Martial exemplars found much favour in a city often threatened by larger states. However, the miracle that stopped the waters of the Jordan to allow the Ark to pass was interpreted as a precedent for baptism and could not have been more appropriate for the doors of the baptistery. The fall of Jericho was, therefore, made subsidiary to a focus on other themes.

Ironically, of the three scenes presented here, it is the one by Giovanni di Paolo in which Joshua is most obviously celebrated for his military achievements, despite being almost free of any narrative, and certainly free of any reference to his destruction of Jericho. 

The Nine Worthies of medieval Christian tradition normally combined three Jews, three pagans, and three Christians, but Dante alters the company to include more Christians and some fictional characters. While some of the heroes are the central protagonists of Carolingian epic, others fought the Saracens—a theme of conflict between Christianity and Islam that Dante anticipates at the end of Paradiso 15.

It could be argued, then, that Joshua was for Dante the first crusader; the first to return the Holy Land to its rightful people, even if those people differ between the Old Testament and the Comedy.

Ghiberti dressed Joshua in armour as the epitome of the divinely protected warrior, favoured by God. The mosaicist in Santa Maria Maggiore presents him as a Roman general. Giovanni di Paolo depicted him in close proximity to Mars, and even dressed him in the same costume.

All three artists turn a blind eye to the violence Joshua unleashed. But the smell of blood is not far away.

References

Bloch, Amy R. 2016. Lorenzo Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise: Humanism, History, and Artistic Philosophy in the Italian Renaissance (Cambridge: CUP)

Christo, Gus George. (trans.). 1998. St John Chrysostom. On Repentance and Almsgiving, The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation, 96 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press), pp. 98–99

Réau, Louis. 1956. Iconographie de l’art chrétien, 3 vols (Paris: Presses Universtiaires De France)

Dartmouth Dante Project. Available at: https://dante.dartmouth.edu/ [accessed 28 June 2022]