The Ethiopian Eunuch

The book of Acts does not have a central place in many lectionaries. And the story of the Ethiopian eunuch’s baptism—despite its dramatic quality—has not always had the same prominence in preaching and visual representation as it has in Acts’ chronicle of the spread of the gospel.

The scene did, however, gain some popularity in the Protestant Netherlands in the mid-sixteenth to early seventeenth centuries, as part of a turn away from saints and their legends in favour of biblical characters and incidents. In addition, the logic of the eunuch’s conversion suited Protestant expectations and polemic. His faith begins with his intense study of Scripture, is nurtured by Philip’s exposition and preaching of ‘the good news of Jesus’, and—with the addition of verse 37—is finally expressed in an explicit confession that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, leading directly to baptism.

These painted windows skilfully present the whole narrative. In the two right-hand lancets (not reproduced in this exhibition), Philip, in a rich blue robe, animatedly addresses the lavishly dressed Ethiopian, who is seated in a grandly appointed chariot and attended by a considerable retinue. In the two lancets shown here, we see (in the right background) Philip seated in the chariot as he expounds the text from Isaiah which the eunuch had been reading without understanding. Then, in the left foreground, at the end of a long and twisting path, Philip baptizes the eunuch in a pool formed by a lively stream which flows dramatically from high up on the left.

In seventeenth-century English (as also in its Greek and Latin equivalents), ‘desert’ referred not only to dry and barren regions, but to any wild or uninhabited place. Abraham van Linge’s landscape, though green and well-watered, is, with its rocky outcrops and steep and winding road, such a place.

In such a place, even a meeting between apostle and eunuch seems something of a miracle, let alone that it would result in one of the first signs of the fulfilment of the promise of the risen Lord given at his ascension—‘you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth’ (Acts 1:8).

So—though it is not demanded by the text—the eunuch’s confession and baptism are worthy of the crowd the artist has assembled, with us, to witness the scene.

The origin of the motif of our Lady of Mercy is uncertain, but by the fifteenth century it had become popular, especially in Catalonia where this sculpture was probably made. A benignly smiling and rosy cheeked Virgin Mary stretches out her arms to shelter an assembly of people under her richly decorated cloak, supported by Saints Peter and Paul. The Virgin and her saintly assistants are many times larger than those she draws around her, allowing her to protect a goodly number; but her stature also adds to the image’s evocation of a sheltering presence.

In some versions of the motif, Mary offers protection to particular groups (members of a religious community, for example), but here she gathers something of a cross-section of society. The variety of headgear signals the variety of persons and ranks under her protection—there is a papal tiara, a cardinal’s hat, a mitre, and a crown, as well as fashionable turbans, caps, and wimples for male and female laity. And at the right-hand edge of the group is a male of African descent, kneeling and looking upwards expectantly.

Should we be surprised by his presence—as many of the first readers of the Book of Acts might have been surprised by the presence of the Ethiopian eunuch amongst the first gentiles to accept the gospel? In some ways the appearance of this Black man is a reflection of the artist’s social reality—the first enslaved Africans had been brought to Europe only some seventy-five years before this sculpture was fashioned. Spain in particular had a sizeable Black population in the early sixteenth century, estimated to be as much as 10% in major centres such as Seville.

And yet such social reality—as later history would prove—was never sufficient, by itself, to ensure the presence of Black people (enslaved or otherwise) under the protecting wings of the Virgin or ‘Mother Church’. As Martin Luther King, Jr would say some 450 years after this object was made: ‘11 o’clock on a Sunday morning is America’s most segregated hour’.

The presence of this single Black person under the unsegregated cape of salvation, like the conversion of the Ethiopian eunuch, is a sign of the gospel’s reaching to the very ends of the earth—even if the church has found it hard in practice to accept the universalism of Christ’s promise.

Jusepe de Ribera and his artistic contemporaries regularly depicted people whose mental or physical conditions were perceived as abnormal (people with dwarfism, extreme curvature of the spine, etc.)—sometimes as a foil to their portrayals of elegant courtiers (Royal Academy 1976: 52).

In this painting, a broken tablet at right bids us behold a ‘Great Miracle (or Wonder) of Nature’. The artist means to commend his artwork, of course, with all its virtuosity—but also the woman whose story the tablet recounts.

According to that tablet, Magdalena, 52 when she was painted, had become hairy at the age of 37, growing a beard ‘more worthy of a man than of a woman who had borne three sons’. That luxuriant beard, a traditional symbol of ‘masculinity’, is juxtaposed with her prominently bared breast (anatomically misplaced, as if to draw attention to it) and the child about to suckle. It is this juxtaposition which might seem to be the wonder.

But Magdalena Ventura does not invite our curiosity or pity. This grave life-size figure meets us head on, or eye to eye. Her husband remains in the shadows—a latter day Joseph perhaps. But Magdalena steps forward into the strong light, her dignified pose evoking both the Virgin Mary and, at the same time, Simeon with the Christ child. Ribera presents no ‘curiosity’ of the sort that would later be touted in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century ‘freak shows’, nor even a merely resolute woman. From the shadows of her own life Magdalena has emerged with dignity and grace, the head of a holy family.

Strangely, we don’t know the eunuch’s name in Acts 8. ‘Behold a man, Ethiopian, a eunuch’ would be the literal translation of verse 27. And five times Luke refers to him as ‘the eunuch’, as if it is this supposed ‘unmanliness’ (by conventional measures) which makes him a wonder—just as being a bearded (‘unwomanly’) woman is what brought Magdalena to the attention of Ribera’s patron.

But as Ribera asks us to see beyond that superficial attribute, so too does Luke. This ambiguously gendered outsider is arguably the first gentile convert in the book of Acts, and in his devout study of the Scriptures, his openness to the preaching of Jesus, and the alacrity with which he seeks baptism, we are to see him first of all as one who steps into the light, a recipient of God’s grace.

References

Royal Academy of Arts, London. 1976. The Golden Age of Spanish Painting (London: Royal Academy)