The Widow of Zarephath

That the widow in Leandro Bassano’s portrait is praying is indicated by the rosary beads draped across her hand and by the barely visible prie-dieu on which two silver candle stands are placed. A painting hangs above it—a birth scene, perhaps a replication of one of Bassano’s own paintings of the Birth of the Virgin. But rather than squarely facing this painting, the woman kneels at an angle to it, gesturing in its direction with her left hand while half-turned towards us.

A continuity between the subject of the painting and the painting-within-the-painting is created by the shiny object painted as though perched on the frame of the latter. It is a two-handled copper jug for water, at once a practical item in the context of a birth and something evocative of a sacred vessel, such as a cruet—like the candle holders, both useful and devotional. The white details of the woman’s scarf, handkerchief, and cuffs are also echoed by the details within the painted room: the women’s veils, scarves, towels, and the sheets appropriate to a bedroom. There is a multivalent quality to the birth scene too. Is it sacred or secular? Was the aged widow involved in that birth? Was she perhaps the naked baby held over the bath by the midwife, or the mother who is still lying on the bed? Is she showing us, and with her upturned palm almost caressing, an heirloom hanging in her noble home?

This solitary widow clad in black, like the widow of Zarephath with her dead child, sums up the wisdom of women. Her outstretched hands are expressive of many unspoken words. One, with open palm, displays a solid gold ring that connects her to a longer history of family and affection. The other, turned downwards, shows darker, more hardened skin marked by the experience of providing for others, sharing the altruistic impulse of the widow of Zarephath and Proverbs’ Woman of Valour, whose hands ‘are stretched out to the needy’ (Proverbs 31:20; Midrash Eshet Hayil, Batei Midrashot, vol. 2).

In this pose, she exudes an air of readiness for whatever life brings. She contemplates at once birth and death, light and darkness, past and future generations, absorbed in the dark mysteries of life to which she has gained privileged access.

Wall paintings at the synagogue of Dura Europos, considered the earliest extant Jewish pictorial narratives, resist being interpreted against the biblical text. Scholars who have tried to press this image against the written narrative have been disappointed with the results. Thus, Herbert Kessler and Kurt Weitzman lament that the artist ‘sacrifice[ed] a good deal of iconographic clarity’ by disregarding key elements of the biblical story for the sake of symmetry (Weitzmann and Kessler 1990: 108). They judged the panel to be a poor likeness of the text. By contrast, Carl Kraeling appreciated the artist’s synthesis and the linear movement from left to right that conveys the story ‘with the utmost clarity and simplicity’ (Kraeling 1956: 143). These divergent views demonstrate that the image is not simply text-derived, but transformed through interpretative mediation into a visual message.

The visual synthesis in the painting in fact works by highlighting dialogic interaction between the widow and Elijah in three salient moments. On the left, the widow in black mourning robes and with bare chest lifts up the lifeless body of her naked child, complaining to Elijah and accusing him of his murder (1 Kings 17:18). At the centre, Elijah reclines on his bed holding the child up towards the hand of God, praying for his life to return (v.20). To the right, the happy mother has changed her garment to bright yellow and holds a rosy-cheeked baby on her hip, proclaiming Elijah as true prophet (v.24).

Each moment is captured through dramatic gesture that underscores emotional dialogue between the characters. Viewers familiar with the story, read out or enacted in dialogue form, would read the panel like a tableau vivant, associating words with the images. The widow’s dramatic request and her joyful proclamation frame the prophet’s miracle and take precedence over his centre-stage posture. As a petitioning mother (Fein 2013), it is she who conveys the urgency of this story of hope in the face of death.

References

Crostini, Barbara. Forthcoming. ‘Performing the Bible at Dura: A Panel of Elijah and the Widow of Sarepta as tableau vivant’, in Performance in Late Antiquity and Byzantium, ed. by Niki Tsironi (Princeton: Center for Hellenic Studies)

______. 2023. ‘Empowering Breasts: Women, Widows and Prophetesses with Child’, in Motherhood and Breastfeeding in Late Antiquity and Byzantium, ed. by Aspasia Skouroumouni and Stavroula Constantinou (London: Taylor & Francis) 

Fein, Sarah. 2013. ‘Prayer, Petition, and Even Prophecy: The Widow of Zarephath in Word and Image’, The Graduate Journal of Harvard Divinity School, available at https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/hdsjournal/book/prayer-petition-and-even-prophecy

Kraeling, Carl H. 1956. The Excavations at Dura-Europos Conducted by Yale University and the French Academy of Inscriptions and Letters: Final Report 8, Part 1: The Synagogue, ed. by A.R. Bellinger et al. (New Haven: Yale University Press), 143–46

Weitzmann, Kurt and Herbert L. Kessler. 1990. The Frescoes of the Dura Synagogue and Christian Art, Dumbarton Oaks Studies, 28 (Washington DC: Dumbarton Oaks) 

This twelfth-century enamel cross assembles a variety of what are considered standard typological images of the crucifixion. The panels visually play with the shape of the cross, both in their geometrical, jewelled portions and in their iconographies. On the vertical shaft, the column and the horizontally winding serpent between Moses and Aaron (Numbers 21:4–9), the arms of Jacob crossed in blessing his symmetrically arranged grandsons Ephraim and Manasseh (Genesis 48), and the huge bunch of grapes dangling from the pole (Numbers 13), visually recall cross shapes. On the horizontal beam, a Hebrew man uses the blood of a lamb to mark the Tau on his house in Egypt (Exodus 12) and the Widow of Zarephath (1 Kings 17:12) picks up firewood in such a way that two sticks form the shape of the cross. In this game of associations that engenders meaning, a whole tradition is gathered together in the shape of the cross.

The widow of Zarephath is the only woman in the composition. The Latin inscriptions identify the figures as VIDUA (‘widow’) and HELYAS (‘Elijah’). Vidua literally means ‘empty’ in Latin. Like Christ, this nameless woman empties herself as she stoops to gather wood, in an inclined pose that Adriana Cavarero stigmatizes as quintessentially motherly: ‘“Mother” … is thus above all the name for an inclination toward the other’ (Cavarero 2016: 104).

At the same time, her oblique body counteracts the movement of the living tree behind her whose crown bends backwards and creates yet another cruciform intersection. Its green foliage contrasts with the dead wood she holds up and the two types of wood, living and dried, hint at the promise of resurrection, of life after death.

Despite her marginal position on the side of the cross and her generic designation undeserving of a proper name, this widow is not subordinate to the prophet: she too is an agent of salvation. Within the square panel, she has pride of place, with Elijah seemingly having begun to walk out of the frame but now turning back in response to her with a gesture of blessing that visually echoes and extends Jacob’s blessing of Ephraim. Like Jacob, Elijah passes on to the widow the task of carrying forward God’s plan. The story of salvation continues in the humble, prophetic self-giving of this nameless woman.

References

Baert, Barbara. 2004. A Heritage of Holy Wood: The Legend of the True Cross in Text and Image (Leiden: Brill), pp. 107–11

Cavarero, Adriana. 2016. Inclinations: A Critique of Rectitude (Stanford: Stanford University Press)