This ninth-century Carolingian illumination of Psalm 23 is found in the Stuttgart Psalter. The manuscript uses 316 illuminations to accompany the Psalter. In contrast to the almost contemporary Utrecht Psalter, which is characterized by a concern to illustrate every detail of the ‘word-pictures’ in the Psalms, the Stuttgart Psalter takes a more pared down approach.

Accordingly, in this illumination made to accompany Psalm 23, one theme is prioritized, that of the protective ‘Shepherd / Lord’ of Psalm 23:1–4. In the centre, in the heavy, brightly-coloured style that is characteristic of the Stuttgart, stands the Shepherd, nimbed with a halo and holding a staff or ferula (Psalm 23:4). The Psalmist himself, the speaker of the Psalm, is noticeably absent. The ‘still waters’ of Psalm 23:2 are represented by the stream on whose banks the ‘Shepherd’ stands, and the green pastures (also of Psalm 23:2) by the two trees to his right and left (painted in markedly different styles). The ‘evil’ referenced in verse 4 is here suggested by the snake wrapped around the base of the tree to the ‘Shepherd’s’ right, which he is calmly subduing with his extended right hand. The combination of the tree (which recalls the tree of knowledge of Genesis 2:17); the serpent (which is viewed within Christian theology as the bringer of death to humankind, see Genesis 3); and the haloed Shepherd, a figure who, in the New Testament, is often linked with Christ, implies that in this illumination, Psalm 23 is being interpreted ‘typologically’ (when the Old Testament is read through the prism of the New).

Bearing the cross as the Shepherd in the Psalm bears his staff, Christ opens the way to salvation, and leads his people along it.

References

Hill, Robert C (Trans.). 2000. Theodoret of Cyrus: Commentary on the Psalms, 1-72, The Fathers of the Church (Washington, DC: CUA Press)

Roger Fenton’s photograph of the Crimean ‘valley of death’ (the ravine that ran between the British and Russian camps during the Crimean war) represents a key moment within the reception history of Psalm 23. It is both a reinterpretation of the Psalm for the age of modern warfare, and testament to the Psalm’s ubiquity within British culture. The British familiarity with the Psalm was largely due to the multiple woodcut versions of Pilgrim’s Progress that had flooded the market since the late seventeenth century and which all featured an image of Christian in the ‘valley of the shadow of death’.  

Fenton, one of the first war photographers, had been commissioned to take photos of the Crimean War. Because Victorian sensibilities could not tolerate graphic photographs, Fenton focused on the ‘landscape of aftermath’ (Grant 2005). Thus this image, exhibited by Fenton on his return from the Crimea in 1855, depicts the aftermath of a battle in the area referred to by the troops as ‘the valley of death’ (see Psalm 23:4), a location that was also immortalized by Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem The Charge of the Light Brigade (1854).

Fenton’s landscape is devoid of human, animal, or indeed any living presence. Instead, the barren hills and the snaking road are covered in cannonballs and other debris, a grim reminder of the human loss that the landscape repeatedly bore witness to throughout the war. The connection of the landscape in this photograph with Psalm 23 by the authors of the 1855 exhibition catalogue (who appended the title to the image) brings new meaning to the notion of the ‘valley of the shadow of death’ evoked in 23:4. Here in the photograph, the ‘valley of the shadow of death’ from which the Lord is said to provide protection is a literal valley scattered with the debris of modern warfare, in which many experienced great ‘darkness’. Whether Fenton’s photograph suggests a continuation of that divine protection, is entirely ambiguous.

References

Grant, Simon 2005: ‘A Terrible Beauty’, Tate Etc, 5, available at https://www.tate.org.uk/tate-etc/issue-5-autumn-2005/terrible-beauty

The Parma Psalter is a rare example of a Jewish illuminated Psalter, produced in Italy during a time of Jewish persecution. Puzzlingly, this Psalter seems alone in having escaped the prohibition on human representation that applied to (extant) contemporaneous Ashkanazi manuscripts (see Beit-Arie, Silver & Metzger 1996: 103–07). One artist is thought to have produced all its 102 illuminations. Text and image are interwoven with each other, resulting in intricate geometric designs.

Deep knowledge of the Hebrew text of the Psalms has resulted in an iconographic schema which bears little relation to the established Christian iconography of the Psalms, itself influenced by the Vulgate translation of Psalm 23:4. In the Vulgate translation the Hebrew word salmawet (meaning deep shadow or death shadow; BDB 6757) became (via the Greek Septuagint’s skias thanatou) ‘the shadow of death’. The single Hebrew word became two words; death became a freestanding noun rather than a intensifying qualifier of ‘shadow’. This reinforced a Christian interpretation that looked to redemption in another world beyond this mortal one.

Within the Jewish tradition, by contrast, instead of conveying a promise of eschatological deliverance (from the ‘valley of the shadow of death’), the Psalm is seen to celebrate God’s constant presence in this life, even through exile and other negative experiences (see Gillingham 2018: 144–47).

This more hopeful, ‘this-worldly’ Jewish interpretation of the Psalm is reflected in the Parma artist’s decision to focus on the joyful opening of the Psalm, which emphasizes God’s loving care for his people on earth. The Psalmist, a symbol of ‘God’s people’, is thus portrayed as a human figure with a dog’s head, wearing a brown hat with a distinctive rim, and sitting on a grassy knoll next to a river. The mixing of human and animal bodies is common in the Parma psalter (although unusual elsewhere) and may be a visual nod to the notion, which runs through the Psalms, that every creature should participate in the universal praise of God’s glory (Beit-Arie, Silver & Metzger 1996: 103).

Accordingly, this hybrid Psalmist figure raises his hands in supplication, whilst a brightly-coloured bird flies above him. He conveys the spirit of the original Jewish exile, encouraging his viewers to stay faithful and hopeful during their own period of persecution.

References

Beit-Arie, Malachi, Emanuel Silver, and Thérèse Metzger. 1996: The Parma Psalter: A Thirteenth-century Illuminated Hebrew Book of Psalms with a Commentary by Abraham Ibn Ezra (London: Facsimile Editions)

Gillingham, Susan. 2018: Psalms Through the Centuries: Volume 2 (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell)