Medievalish 4.2
An Altarpiece Preaches
Dear friend,
I had the privilege of visiting New York in January. There were two main objectives on this trip: 1. Hang out with my sister. 2. Visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Siena: The Rise of Painting exhibition before it closed (the day after I made it!). My husband came too and it was only our second trip together sans children, other than some quick mountain weekends.
Good news! Siena: The Rise of Painting lived up to my wildly high expectations. The Sienese artworks were breathtaking, material, powerful.
I loved this strange little piece from Simone Martini, painted in Avignon in the 1340s. It is a scene from when Jesus taught in the temple without his parents at age twelve, and they missed him in panic. St. Joseph sternly talks to preteen Jesus, gesturing towards Mary. “Look at how you made your mother feel!” The young Christ’s arms are crossed. There are no regrets there.
However, I had been eagerly waiting to see something really special, something I had been longing to see: some of the pieces of Duccio’s Maestà altarpiece, which had been hacked apart and sold in pieces in the eighteenth century. Duccio and the pieces of the Maestà were the stars of the show.
In the early fourteenth century, the city of Siena commissioned Duccio di Buoninsegna to create a new altarpiece for the cathedral, the Duomo, which had been completed forty years earlier. Duccio’s workshop, a stone’s throw away from the cathedral, feverishly completed a massive masterpiece: over sixteen feet high and sixteen feet long. It was also double-sided. On one side, many panels depicting the life of Mary and the massive central art piece for which the piece is named, Maestà, majesty, the enthroned Virgin and Child sitting amidst the saints. On the other side, Duccio and his workshop painted many scenes from the life of Christ.
On June 9th, 1311, the people of Siena processed around the town and into the cathedral, carrying the massive Maestà to its new home at the altar. I wish I could have been there—can you imagine a massive, golden, stunning set of paintings more than twice the height of the tallest man there making its way around a medieval city, with joy and singing?
I was particularly thrilled to see Duccio’s rendition of the Samaritan woman at the well from the Maestà, since I have used that one in teaching multiple times over the past two years. Duccio was very interested in space—he was one of the very first artists to emphasize perspective in paintings. He was particularly famous for the way he painted buildings. His beautiful representation of John 4 tells us a story through this use of space, rich in doctrine and contemplation.
On one side, we see Jesus, sitting on the well. The woman is in the very middle of the painting. The disciples are clustered up against the town on the other side, watching, looking rather apprehensive. Around them all is barren, rocky wilderness.
You may recall that Jews and Samaritans are divided brethren, the remnants of the nations of Judah and Israel. Samaritans have long since fallen into idolatry in the eyes of faithful and law-abiding Jews. They do not worship at the temple and they intermarried with pagans. Samaritans are ritually unclean, much like eating pigs and shellfish. It would have been shocking for Jesus to ask for a drink from this woman. Look at the disciples’ faces—can you see the judgment, wariness, and confusion emanating from their tight cluster? What’s afoot?
In the Hebrew scriptures, wells were a place to meet brides. In Genesis 24, Abraham’s servant meets Rebekah, the future wife of Isaac, at a well. In Genesis 29, Jacob meets Rachel at a well. And John has already primed us to see the bridegroom, from the Baptist hailing him as the bridegroom in John 2, to the wedding at Cana in chapter three. It is no coincidence that Duccio’s version of John 4 appears right next to his rendition of the Wedding at Cana in the Maestà!
By John 4, here at Jacob’s Well, we see the Bridegroom meeting his Bride. Not literally of course—Jesus isn’t about to marry the Samaritan woman! But as St. Augustine of Hippo wrote, the woman is us—the church—before our conversion and baptism. She is the bride of Christ in the ancient language of union. We can see ourselves in her. In this story, we are able to watch Romans 5 enacted: while we were still enemies, Samaritans, one might say, we were reconciled through Jesus Christ.
Jesus was not waiting for the woman to change her mind about praying on mountaintops and travel to Jerusalem to offer sacrifices in regret for her idolatry. Instead, here he is, in Samaria, ready to meet her, ready to listen and answer questions and offer her something that quenches thirst in all ways, streams of living water within the wilderness.
Jesus is also thirsty. The Samaritan woman is not the only one who thirsts. He wants water. And he wants it literally, but church fathers drew our attention in this passage to Christ’s later words on the cross: “I thirst.” Medieval commentators would often argue that this thirst was not only literal, but figurative. He longs for us. He desires our wholeness, our community, our love. He comes to us before we come to him. He loves us long before we love him.
And speaking of living water within the wilderness, does the well that Jesus is sitting on look like a proper well? No—it looks like a baptismal font! Jesus is about to give the woman the gift of living water: the gift of the presence of the Holy Spirit through baptism. Those vast spaces between the disciples, huddled against the buildings as representative of the institutional orthodoxy, while the woman stands alone. But the previously untraversed spaces between insiders and outsiders, men and women, socially valued and socially unvalued are about to be crossed in union, as all are offered the Holy Spirit, all become the Bride of Christ as the Church.
Such a word feels more important than ever to cling to, in this age of suspicion of the stranger and rejection of the reality that they just might be our neighbor. They just might be the Bride of Jesus. Thank you, Duccio di Buoninsegna. Help us to see our own spaces and structures anew.
What I’ve been up to this month:
The Old Books with Grace podcast has returned! Editor and writer
joined me for an episode on one of our mutual favorites, the Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple and Spotify.Working on little odds and ends writing projects.
Finished final edits on the new book… it’s coming your way, folks! Can’t wait to share it with you. The need to think deeply about virtues and vices feels extremely pertinent in this tear-it-all-down age and new political regime.
What I’ve been reading this month:
Nonfiction: A Circle of Quiet by one of my favorites, Madeleine L’Engle.
Fiction: I read the new “romantasy” bestseller, Onyx Storm. It was… not good. I almost want to write about it but feel as though that would be a little mean, like hitting a piñata without a blindfold.
Medieval/Medieval-adjacent: Working my way through Bernard McGinn’s magisterial (and I do not use that word lightly) series on Christian mysticism.
Article: “This is my life. I want no other.” A meditation on the good life from the theologian Stanley Hauerwas at Plough.
A Prayer from the Past
Today, I’m sharing part of a fourteenth-century Middle English prayer, in the style of the hermit and contemplative writer Richard Rolle, from a manuscript at Cambridge. In honor of Valentine’s Day, this prayer is about cultivating, as Medieval English people called it, “love-longing” to God. The full text can be found in Carleton Brown’s Religious Lyrics of the XIVth Century. Middle English on top, translation follows.
Ihesu, god sone, lord of mageste, Send wil to my hert anly to couayte the. Reue me liking of this land, my lufe that thou may be; Take my hert in-till thi hand, sett me in stabylte. Ihesu, the mayden sone, that wyth thi blode me boght, Thyrl my sawule wyth thi spere, that mykel luf in men hase wroght; Me langes lede me to thi lyght, & festen in the al my thoght, In thi swetnes fyll my hert, my wa make wane till noght. Ihesu my god, ihesu my keyng, forsake noght my desire, My thoght make it to be meke, I hate bath pryde and ire. Thi wil es my yherning, of lufe thou kyndel the fyre. That I in sweet louyng with aungels take my hyre. Jesus, God's son, Lord of majesty, Send a will to my heart only to covet thee. Tear from me liking of this land, be thou my love; Take my heart into thy hand, set me in stability. Jesus, the maiden's son, that with thy blood hath bought me, Pierce my soul with thy spear, that has wrought much love in mankind; I long to be lead to thy light, and fasten in thee all my thought, In thy sweetness fill my heart, diminish my woe to nothing. Jesus my God, Jesus my king, forsake not my desire, Make my thought meek, I hate both pride and ire. Thy will is my yearning, kindle the fire of my love. That I may take my reward in sweet loving amongst the angels. Amen.
Peace for your February,
Grace
P.S. Medievalish is free, and I’d be delighted if you shared it with a friend!
I am so glad that you shared this experience with us. I would never have seen such a beautiful piece and certainly not been able to interpret it in this manner. It makes sense to me, what you described and how the artist depicted these ideas. It leaves me feeling loved and cherished by Jesus but also gently reminded of the need to keep that love in mind re our neighbours. This is an area that the Holy Spirit has been actively working on in me in the last few weeks. Bless you for sharing and yay to time away with your husband and sister! “Thy Will is my yearning…” is something you could repeat to yourself like an active prayer.
Thank you for the joyful meditation on, and exegesis of, this gorgeous painting! I'm so grateful for your voice.