Over Troubled Water

The Utrecht Psalter (named for its current location in the University Library in Utrecht), is a ninth-century manuscript believed to have been made near Reims in France. A product of the Carolingian Renaissance, it contains 166 unusually literal pen drawings illustrating the entire Psalter (Horst et al. 1996). These detailed pen illustrations so captivated viewers’ eyes that, in the tenth and eleventh centuries, English scribes made two full copies of it, now known as the Harley Psalter (The British Library) and the Eadwine Psalter (Trinity College, Cambridge).

The artist’s treatment of Psalm 93 (fol. 54v) appears christological (DeWald 1932): in the centre-top figure with halo, nimbus, and mandorla we are invited to see the Lord (that is, Christ) coming into his kingship (v.1). He carries a spear to represent his strength (v.1) and two scrolls to represent his testimony (v.5). Below him two figures—divine beings or human disciples?—prepare his throne (v.2). They are holding books, perhaps alluding to the idea that Jesus fulfilled the Law and the Prophets (Matthew 5:17). Personifications of waters/floods (at left and right) blow on trumpets as they are ‘lifting up their voice’ (v.3). At bottom the surging waves of the sea (v.4), on left and right, are juxtaposed with God’s firmly-established world (v.1). The Temple context of verse 5 appears at bottom-centre with the Tabernacle and worshippers making their appearance. One detail, the six angels surrounding Christ, is wholly absent from the psalm—though perhaps they allude to the six days of creation crowned by the Sabbath.

The dense symbolism of these monochrome illuminations has led to their being described as ‘something like tableaux of pictorial riddles or charades, a form of play and instruction that the reader must decipher’ (Luttikhuizen and Verkerk 2005: 178). In deciphering the Psalm 93 illumination, the viewer is encouraged to go back and forth between image and text, and in so doing to engage with the text more slowly, more carefully, pausing over its rich imagery. And just as the Psalmist contrasts God’s orderly kingship with the chaos of the waters, so the sketch-like chaos of the image contrasts with the neat rows of Latin letters above and below.

References

Bessette, Lisa. 2005. ‘The Visualization of the Contents of the Psalms in the Early Middle Ages’ (PhD diss., University of Michigan)

DeWald, Ernest T. 1932. The Illustrations of the Utrecht Psalter (Princeton: Princeton University Press)

Horst, Koert van der et al (eds). 1996. The Utrecht Psalter in Medieval Art: Picturing the Psalms of David (Westrenen: HES)

Luttikhuizen, Henry, and Dorothy Verkerk. 2005. Snyder’s Medieval Art (Upper Saddle River: Pearson)

I am not trying to illustrate the text of the psalms, as such, but to reach a place in an inner landscape, a state of being. The artwork in the end is the accumulated work upon a meditation upon a specific text and I hope that the text will be felt when viewing the art work. My desire to create visual meditations on the psalms springs from the desire to make the inner life visible. (Winter 2017a)

In his psalmic paintings, Quaker painter Bernard C. Winter aims not solely to capture the imagery in a given psalm, but also to use painting as a form of meditation on the psalm’s emotional journey. Winter’s focus on his inner life and relationship with Christ as he meditates on a psalm reflects the biblical theologian Ellen F. Davis’s account of the Psalms as ‘instructed emotion’ (Davis 2005: 21). Here the artist incorporates both image and text, his own translation drawn creatively from several English versions.

Winter’s use of shape and colour conveys what he sees as the dual emotional impact of Psalm 93 (Winter 2017b). He writes: ‘My vision of the psalm was that of two energies—a driving chaotic force, and a majestic, stabilizing force would be interacting’. The ‘driving chaotic force’ is here captured by the whirling hurricane, bounded in by the ‘outstretched arms’ of the Latin cross.

By incorporating the bold capital letters of the psalm in his painting, Winter both makes the letters into images and emphasizes the textual basis of this artwork. These letters are solid and weighty, just as God’s testimony is sure (v.5). The bright, vivid contrast between the blue background and the bright red lettering again reflects the dual emotional energy of the psalm.

Winter’s Latin cross suggests a christological dimension to his interpretation of Psalm 93; he writes that when creating it he was thinking of Gospel accounts of Jesus calming stormy waters (Matthew 8:23–27; Mark 4:35–41; Luke 8:22–25). This painting, then, reflects the prayerful lectio divina behind all Winter’s artwork—a canonical-scriptural imagination at work, finding vivid expression in a visual medium.

References

Davis, Ellen F. 2005. Wondrous Depth: Preaching the Old Testament (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press)

Winter, Bernard C. 2017a. ‘About the Psalm Series, 28 October 2017’, www.bernardcwinterart.com, [accessed 19 August 2019]

———. 2017b. ‘Psalm 93 and Reflections on the Psalm, 28 October 2017’, www.bernardcwinterart.com, [accessed 19 August 2019]

While not strictly a visual depiction of Psalm 93, Rembrandt van Rijn’s painting depicts a Gospel story (Matthew 8:23–27; Mark 4:35–41; Luke 8:22–25) that strongly echoes the Psalmist’s imagery of God’s mightiness over the raging waters of the sea. Rembrandt’s painting captures the complexity of both the psalm’s imagery and the psychology of the various characters in the Gospel scene.

Biblically, water is a multivalent image, at times lifesaving (‘As a deer longs for flowing streams’, Psalm 42:1) and at other times life-threatening (as in the story of the Flood, Genesis 6–9). Similarly, the Palmist is unclear about whether the waters are lifted in praise of God or are in rebellion against God. Rembrandt conveys this ambiguity as our eyes move about the painting. On the right, the waves and sky are dark, brooding, threatening. But on the left, the clouds part, light comes in, and the bubbly-white waves are painted with delicate texture, more fluffy than frightful (Walsh 1985: 48–49).

Whereas the Gospel accounts of this scene portray the disciples as a group, every figure in Rembrandt’s visual meditation adds detail to its narrative drama. For example, five disciples hold tight the sails, trying to keep the boat afloat, not realizing the true source of their impending deliverance. One vomits overboard, too afflicted in body to focus on his master.

The characters’ gazes also convey important dynamics of the scene. Only three look at Jesus, who appears serene, perhaps having just awoken from his nap. One disciple turns his back both to us and to Jesus: is he dozing through the storm, like Jonah? Or is he so trusting in God that he doesn’t feel the need to wake Jesus at all? The disciple next to him gazes directly at us. His staring eyes, coupled with the variety of responses catalogued in the painting, ask the viewer the same challenging questions the story asks the reader: ‘What sort of man is this?’; ‘Where is your faith?’ (Durham 2004: 14–15, 30–33).

References

Durham, John I. 2004. The Biblical Rembrandt: Human Painter in a Landscape of Faith (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press)

Walsh, John. 1985. ‘Observations on Rembrandt’s “Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee”’, Notes in the History of Art, 5.1: 44–52