Designed by Pieter Coecke van Aelst the Elder, possibly woven by Willem de Pannemaker

Three Episodes in the Life of Saint Paul, from the series The Story of Saint Paul, Second third of 16th century, Tapestry, 405 x 686 cm, The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Charles Potter Kling Fund, 65.596, Photograph ©️ 2023 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

A Spark of Life

Commentary by Amina Wright

Cite Share

In this detail from an extravagant royal tapestry, Paul’s week in Troas has reached its climax: the moment Eutychus is restored to life.

The drama is acted out by three pairs of figures. Two women hover anxiously on the threshold of the meeting house as Eutychus lies at death’s door. The passive, huddled women are contrasted with two active men dashing round the corner towards the fallen youth, their arms, legs, and cloaks flying. The two men may be Paul’s travelling companions: one wears a heavy purse on his belt, perhaps the offering gathered from the Greek churches that they are now carrying to Jerusalem (Romans 15:25–27).

Together, the bystanders represent the two sides of Christian life, prayer and action, which both meet in the single figure of Paul.

The intensity of Paul’s expression is striking, gazing into the distance as though drawing in the life-restoring power of the Holy Spirit from far beyond his own strength. Equally hard to miss is the torch that Eutychus appears to have dropped on his way down from the window; a reminder of the ‘many lights’ lit in the room above. This flambeau also recalls Genesis 15:17, when Abraham sees God’s presence as a burning torch, a theophany that prefigures the burning bush and pillar of fire of Exodus (chapters 3 and 13). Perhaps too it echoes a motif found on certain funerary monuments in which an extinguished torch may presage resurrection hope.

While his life hangs in the balance, Eutychus’s insensible finger points towards the torch as it smokes and flickers. It is not clear from the text whether the young man has been killed outright by his three-storey tumble (Acts 20:10), but the flickering torch is a sign that ‘his life is in him’. God is present, he is already safe in Paul’s arms, and by morning he will be fully alive again.

 

References

Cleland, Elizabeth A. H. (ed.). 2014. Grand Design: Pieter Coecke van Aelst and Renaissance Tapestry (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art), pp.156–61

See full exhibition for Acts of the Apostles 20:1–12

Acts of the Apostles 20:1–12

Revised Standard Version

20 After the uproar ceased, Paul sent for the disciples and having exhorted them took leave of them and departed for Macedoʹnia. 2When he had gone through these parts and had given them much encouragement, he came to Greece. 3There he spent three months, and when a plot was made against him by the Jews as he was about to set sail for Syria, he determined to return through Macedoʹnia. 4Sopʹater of Beroeʹa, the son of Pyrrhus, accompanied him; and of the Thessaloʹnians, Aristarʹchus and Secunʹdus; and Gaʹius of Derbe, and Timothy; and the Asians, Tychʹicus and Trophʹimus. 5These went on and were waiting for us at Troʹas, 6but we sailed away from Philippi after the days of Unleavened Bread, and in five days we came to them at Troʹas, where we stayed for seven days.

7 On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul talked with them, intending to depart on the morrow; and he prolonged his speech until midnight. 8There were many lights in the upper chamber where we were gathered. 9And a young man named Euʹtychus was sitting in the window. He sank into a deep sleep as Paul talked still longer; and being overcome by sleep, he fell down from the third story and was taken up dead. 10But Paul went down and bent over him, and embracing him said, “Do not be alarmed, for his life is in him.” 11And when Paul had gone up and had broken bread and eaten, he conversed with them a long while, until daybreak, and so departed. 12And they took the lad away alive, and were not a little comforted.

More Exhibitions