The One Who Dwells

This delicately rendered watercolour of the wing of a dead bird is just one of Albrecht Dürer’s numerous detailed studies of the natural world. A prolific artist, Dürer made paintings and prints of the biblical and mythological subjects most prized by his contemporaries, but he also gave attention to the minute and mundane. He detailed a patch of weeds, a seated, quivering hare, and a dead bird’s wing. To him, the beauty and order of the natural world reflected the very beauty and order of the Divine.

Here, with painstaking care, Dürer convincingly represents the soft, downier feathers closest to the bird’s body, the dense, mosaic-like feathers along the wing’s top edge, and the smooth, sleek primary wing feathers. We can count each plume and even see places where the barbs of the feather have separated slightly. Brilliant cerulean and turquoise contrast with warm brown and vermilion, creating a pleasing visual balance.

While this watercolour was not made in direct response to Psalm 91, Dürer’s fascination with the blue roller’s wing invites our own contemplation of the psalmist’s metaphor in verse 4: ‘He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge’. Some scholars have suggested that this should be understood as a reference to the cherubim wings that curved over the Ark of the Covenant (Kim 2007: 70). But the poetic image of birds’ wings, like the one Dürer depicts, is also specifically invoked in Deuteronomy 32:11 to describe God’s care for the people of Israel. Despite their apparent softness and fragility, feathers are uniquely equipped to shield a bird’s young from a range of threats. Indeed, each of the different kinds of feathers that Dürer so carefully paints are responsible for protecting chicks from the varying dangers of predators, heat, cold, and rain. And if God has already given so much attention to the sparrows of the field (Matthew 6:26–27), how much more so will he provide for his children?       

Reference

Kim, Heerak Christian. 2007: The Jerusalem Tradition in the Late Second Temple Period: Diachronic and Synchronic Developments Surrounding Psalms of Solomon 11 (Landham, Maryland: University Press of America)

In the Christian tradition of canonical hours, or prayers at fixed times, Compline is the final prayer of the day. The name comes from the Latin completorium, meaning something that fills up or completes, just as the prayer concludes the day. According to the Rule of St Benedict, written around 530 CE, Psalm 91 is one of the psalms to be read or sung for this nighttime liturgy. The choice echoes similar uses in Jewish tradition, where the psalm is recited at Ma’ariv on motza’ei Shabbat, the service at the close of Shabbat, or as a prayer before sleeping. Thus, for well over a thousand years, as darkness descended, Jews and Christians have surrendered themselves to God’s care with the psalmist’s words: ‘you will not fear the terror of the night’.

In both appearance and process, Julia Hendrickson’s watercolour painting echoes the psalm’s use as a daily prayer for protection in our vulnerable state of sleep. Rest in the Shadow evokes the mystery of a night sky reflected in water. Dark pools seem to shift and shudder as delicate flashes of light shimmer on the surface.

With her paintbrush loaded with deep blue grey pigment, Hendrickson begins the painting by repeatedly writing a phrase from verse 1—‘rest in the shadow’—in large, looping strokes. Like liturgical chanting night after night, Hendrickson layers the text until it becomes unreadable. The paint eventually fills the entire sheet of paper. But then, Hendrickson scatters coarse salt crystals across the inky expanse. The salt absorbs the watery paint, creating tiny, blooming starbursts that grow like swirling galaxies. The darkness that conceals terrors and threats is inexorably pierced by light (Psalm 139:12 and John 1:5).

When the early Byzantine Empire stretched across North Africa, small earthenware lamps like this one were a common source of indoor light. Many were moulded with Christian symbols such as fish, a dove, the Chi-Rho, a cross, or, as is the case here, a shallow relief of Christ treading on the beasts of Psalm 91:13.

Christ stands in the centre of the medallion, identified by the cross-shaped staff and the monogram repeated in the border. Two-winged angels hover on either side, recalling the promise of verse 11: ‘For he will give his angels charge of you to guard you in all your ways’. Christ’s staff and feet rest on a swirling knot of animals. In addition to the lion and snake identified in the Hebrew text, the lamp also includes two more creatures named in the Septuagint Greek translation: the basilisk and the dragon. According to Hellenistic and later medieval lore, the basilisk was a snake that could kill with a look while the dragon was a mysterious creature with powerful vision. Variations of these four creatures appear in the frequent iterations of this motif in Roman and medieval art.

It may seem incongruous to have this symbol of Christ’s victory over evil on a humble domestic object. Yet the lamp’s function—to illuminate the darkness—and the imprinted image that invokes not just verse 13 but the entirety of the psalm’s promises—actually reinforce each other. In the Christian tradition, Jesus both fulfils and guarantees Psalm 91. Because he has trampled the serpent through his own death and resurrection, those who know his name need not fear the terror of the night (v.5).