Though absolutely abstract, Traversal evokes of the skyline and frenetic movement of New York City.

George Morrison, Traversal, 1958, oil on canvas, 64.8 x 118.4 cm (Art Bridges Foundation) © George Morrison Estate. Speakers: Julia Mun, Assistant Curator, Art Bridges Foundation, and Steven Zucker, Smarthistory

Antoine Oleyant, Guedeh, c. 1981–91, beads and sequins on nylon cloth, 35-1/4 x 43 inches (El Museo del Barrio, New York) © Estate of Antoine Oleyant

In this colorful scene of death and transition, we see a bald figure wielding a lasso aimed at a person in a blue casket amidst floating faces, snakes, and crosses. This is a drapo, a Haitian creole term meaning “flag” (derived from the French drapeau). It is crafted on shining fabric with glimmering sequins by Haitian artist Antoine Oleyant. This drapo is an example of an emblematic religious object that transcended its liturgical (religious) context to become a sought-after art object.

Spiritual flags and flags for the spirits

Drapos are ritual flags and perhaps the most well-known of Vodou’s liturgical objects. These are textiles heavily embroidered with sequins and beads. They are found in oum’phor (temples) adorning the pé (altar) dedicated to the loas. This drapo by Oleyant is dedicated to the Guedeh (also known as Guédé or Gede), the loas of death and cemeteries. While Oleyant’s work was made for the tourist and art market, it is deeply steeped in Vodou tradition.

Vodou combines elements from West African religions and Catholicism into its beliefs, mythology, and practices. Its pantheon features a vast array of figures, with Bondyu as the supreme creator and God, followed by a great number of loas who concern themselves with elemental aspects of the universe and human life. A fundamental characteristic of Vodou is the relationship between the faithful and the loas. Vodouists honor the loas through worship, offerings, and ceremonies where they seek to communicate with them. The loas in turn offer their protection and guidance. Through ritual, the loas aid and advise the faithful in whatever may trouble them, in matters ranging from illness to important work decisions, to personal relationships. Most loas with similar attributes are grouped in families or nations. The Guedeh nation gathers the loas related to different aspects of death and the afterlife.

Loas are often syncretized with Catholic saints and have rich iconographies. They are frequent subjects in modern and contemporary Haitian art, being one of the main themes of the so-called primitive painters of the mid-20th century. They are also essential to the religion’s visual and material culture. The drapos encapsulate all this.

West African asafo flag, mid-20th century (Fante people; Ghana), textile, 111.76 x 157.48 cm (The George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum, Washington, D.C.)

The origin of the Vodou drapo has been traced to Catholic processional banners and the prevalent presence of flags in West African and European military cultures (as identifying emblems of military factions). [1] This concept was adopted into the Vodou religious context to become emblems of the loas. Originally, these ritual flags were created in the temples by Vodouists believed to be under the influence of the loa whose image and symbols they were capturing on the cloth. [2] The flag itself is considered both the offering and the loa’s acceptance of said offering. [3] This spiritual back and forth is an expression of this central communication between devotees and the loas. It also relates to the importance given to aesthetics, as the flag maker strives to make the flag as beautiful as possible to honor the loa it is dedicated to. [4] The glittering brightness of the sequins has also been described as the very presence of the loas in the flags. [5]

Co-drapeaux (flag bearers). Phyllis Galembo, Rose Anne and Andre Rose Mercilien with Drapo, 1994 © Phyllis Galembo

Once finished, the drapos are consecrated through different rituals to activate and imbue them with power. [6] They are then kept in pairs at the temples’ pé, but the flags are also used in ceremonies. They are used to lead processions dedicated to the loas, in ritual salutations at the beginning of ceremonies, and in dances in temples. [7] In these, the flags are carried by female houn’sihs acting as co-drapeaux (flag bearers), who march and dance with them. [8]

Antoine Oleyant, Guedeh, c. 1981–91, beads and sequins on nylon cloth, 35-1/4 x 43 inches (El Museo del Barrio, New York) © Estate of Antoine Oleyant

Oleyant’s vision of the Guedeh

Framed in burgundy cloth is a scene entirely made of sequins. The background is made up of organic shapes in pink, lavender, and grey. At the center is a cross on a stepped pedestal, composed of black, white, and red squares with alternating dots of the same colors in the middle, contrasting dramatically with the pastel background. Spirals reminiscent of ironwork spring from the top and arms of the cross, while two green snakes gather at its crown. Grey heads with no other features but two eyes sprout from the ends of the cross’ arms.

To the right of the great cross is a highly stylized figure with yellow skin and red features. He is barefoot and dressed in blue and black clothes with pink sleeves. He holds what appears to be a red lasso he throws toward a blue coffin. Inside the coffin is a small figure, not unlike the first, dressed in white with black hair crowned with a little cross. Under the main cross and the coffin are a cup, a bottle, and a bell with three floating heads, two grey ones and a black, horned one with four fangs. Six black stars float above the figures and besides the lasso carrier is a stylized cross with a vèvè inspired design.

There is no interest in perspective or depth in the composition. The scene is framed by a green line on the left with the artist’s signature, “Antoine,” and on the right with a golden line reading “Guedeh.” All is surrounded by a pattern of diamond shapes, in turn framed by strips of nylon.

Oleyant’s flag presents a cemetery scene filled with the complex iconography of the loas of death. Cemeteries are appropriate places for the Guedeh, with Baron Samedi being the principal spirit of that space. [9] In fact the cross that defines the composition is inspired by Baron Samedi’s vèvè and is a reference to this loa. The figure with the red lasso and dark clothing befitting the Guedeh may then be a representation of Baron Samedi.

Floating faces (detail), Antoine Oleyant, Guedeh, c. 1981–91, beads and sequins on nylon cloth, 35-1/4 x 43 inches (El Museo del Barrio, New York) © Estate of Antoine Oleyant

The objects under the cross add a ceremonial aspect to the scene. During Fèt Gede (term for Day of the Dead in Haiti), Vodouists honor their dead and the Guedeh in cemeteries by performing rituals, presenting offerings like rum and candles, and lighting fires before crosses associated with these loas, like Baron Samedi and Baron La Croix. In this cemetery scene, the floating faces could represent the dead or spirits.

Green snakes that may represent Legba (detail), Antoine Oleyant, Guedeh, c. 1981–91, beads and sequins on nylon cloth, 35-1/4 x 43 inches (El Museo del Barrio, New York) © Estate of Antoine Oleyant

However, the artist did not limit himself to Guedeh iconography. The two green snakes on the upper part of the cross may represent Legba, either as the prominent loa with two snakes as his symbols and often syncretized with Jesus Christ or as the Legba nation of loas associated with life. [10] Legba is also connected with crossroads. The vèvè-like cross on the right could be a simplified version of Legba’s vèvè. The multitude of symbols craft a composition where Baron Samedi, lord of the cemetery, is ready to transition or cross the recently deceased in the coffin to their afterlife.

From the oum’phor to the art market

This complex narrative scene with multiple figures is representative of Antoine Oleyant’s work. Oleyant broke away from Vodou drapo conventions to create eye-catching flags for the art market. Oleyant was born and raised in the rural town of Plaisance-du-Sud, Haiti. He moved to the capital Port-au-Prince in the early 1970s in search of better economic opportunities. There he started his career working with metal and wood, selling his sculptures to tourists.

Clotaire Bazile, Barron Criminele, c. 1980s, beads and sequins on synthetic cloth, 92 x 82.2 cm (Fowler Museum, Los Angeles) © Estate of Clotaire Bazile

There was an established tourist market for Vodou flags in Port-au-Prince by the 1960s. It only continued to grow in the following decades and in response, more artists and ougans (Vodou priests) like Clotaire Bazile and Sylva Joseph created flags for this audience. Oleyant grew interested in the techniques of flag making and its market and changed his practice. His drapos draw from tradition but he sought his own style and to push the possibilities of what could be communicated through Vodou imagery in sequins. He started to incorporate ceremonial scenes and images of offerings and other ritual objects, which wasn’t common at the time. [11] His figures are highly stylized; the rounded triangular heads and the forked feet in the Guedeh flag are distinct to his style. [12]

Antoine Oleyant, Guedeh, c. 1981–91, beads and sequins on nylon cloth, 35-1/4 x 43 inches (El Museo del Barrio, New York) © Estate of Antoine Oleyant

Oleyant stepped away from the more traditional compositions centered neatly on a vèvè or on the lone figure of a loa. Oleyant brought narrative to the flags, representing various figures and playing with the religious iconography. This can make his compositions difficult to decipher as he was not always interested in following iconographic conventions. This can be seen in Guedeh, where the possible figure of Baron Samedi is featured without his typical top hat and he carries a lasso, which does not seem to be a common symbol in Vodou. The title, the central cross, and the cemetery setting are what allow us an identification of Baron Samedi. Oleyant and other sequin artists who were and are making flags for tourists and collectors conceive their pieces differently from those destined to be liturgical objects. While heavily inspired by Vodou, these commercial flags are not sacralized and so are without religious significance, considered to be “without soul.” [13]

Oleyant’s career skyrocketed in the 1980s when his work drew the attention of visiting artists like Tina Girouard and musician Richard A. Morse, who bought his work and supported him financially. Morse, who took over the management of the famous Hotel Oloffson in the late 1980s, offered Oleyant a space at the hotel for his workshop “Atelier Simbi.” It was there that Girouard and Oleyant met and started a collaborative professional relationship which influenced each other’s work. Girouard began to experiment with the embroidery techniques used by Oleyant, while on her advice Oleyant began crafting monumental pieces. [14] Girouard was also important in helping Oleyant reach a wider U.S. audience; she proposed an exhibition of his work at the 1991 Festival International in Lafayette, Louisiana. [15] Oleyant’s work began to see more international interest from collectors during this period. Unfortunately, he died unexpectedly of a stroke at age 37 at the height of his career, yet he left a lasting influence on generations of drapo artists and its market.

From floor to ceiling, Mantegna’s murals create the illusion that you are surrounded by the duke, his court, and countless historical and mythical figures.

Andrea Mantegna, Camera Picta (Camera degli Sposi), 1465–74, fresco (Palazzo Ducale, Mantua). Speakers: Dr. Steven Zucker and Dr. Beth Harris

Le Corbusier saw the house as a machine, and the Villa Savoye realizes that belief beautifully.

Le Corbusier (Charles-Édouard Jeanneret) with Pierre Jeanneret, Villa Savoye, c. 1928–31, 82 Rue de Villiers, Poissy. Speakers: Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker

The house is a box in the air …
Le Corbusier, Précisions (1929)

Le Corbusier (Charles-Édouard Jeanneret) with Pierre Jeanneret, Villa Savoye, c. 1928–31, 82 Rue de Villiers, Poissy (photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

The Villa Savoye at Poissy, designed by Le Corbusier in 1929, represents the culmination of a decade during which the architect worked to articulate what he considered the essence of modern architecture. Throughout the 1920s, via his writings and designs, Le Corbusier (formerly Charles-Edouard Jeanneret) considered the nature of modern life and architecture’s role in the new machine age. His famous dictum, that “The house is a machine for living in,” is perfectly realized within the forms, layout, materials, and siting of the Villa Savoye. [1]

Located just outside Paris, the Villa Savoye offered an escape from the crowded city for its wealthy patrons. Its location on a large unrestricted site allowed Le Corbusier total creative freedom. The delicate floating box that he designed is both functional house and modernist sculpture, elegantly melding form and function.

Le Corbusier, Vers une architecture (Towards a New Architecture) (New York: Dover Publications, 1923), pp. 134–35

Le Corbusier had been developing his theories on modern architecture throughout the previous decade. In 1920, he founded the journal L’Esprit Nouveau (The New Spirit), and many of the essays he published there would eventually be incorporated into his landmark collection of essays, Vers une architecture (Toward an Architecture) in 1923. This book celebrated science, technology, and reason, arguing that modern machines could create highly precise objects not unlike the ideal platonic forms valued by the ancient Greeks. Le Corbusier lavished praise on the icons of modernity—race cars, airplanes, and factories—marveling at the beauty of their efficiency. However, he also argued that beauty lay not only in the newest technology but in ancient works such as the Parthenon, whose refined forms represented, in his view, the perfection of earlier Archaic systems. Le Corbusier sought to isolate what he called “type forms,” which he referred to as universal elements of design that can work together in a system. He found these across time and across the globe, in the fields of architecture and engineering. The many images embedded throughout the text drew striking visual parallels and eloquently expressed his search for modern perfection through universal forms.

Le Corbusier House, Weissenhofsiedlung, 1927, Stuttgart, Germany (photo: Andreas Praefcke, CC BY 3.0)

During the 1920s, Le Corbusier designed a series of houses which allowed him to develop his ideas further. By 1926, he had devised his Five Points of Architecture, which he viewed as a universal system that could be applied to any architectural site. The system demanded pilotis to raise the building off the ground and allow air to circulate beneath; roof terraces, to bring nature into an urban setting; a free plan that allowed interior space to be distributed at will; a free façade whose smooth plane could be used for formal experimentation; and ribbon windows, which let in light but also reinforced the planarity of the wall.

Ground plan (left), first story (center), atrium and roof garden (right), Le Corbusier, Villa Savoye, 1929, Poissy, France

The Villa Savoye incorporated these principles, and also realized many of the concepts expressed in Vers une Architecture. Made of reinforced concrete, the ground floor walls are recessed and painted green so that the house looks like a box floating on delicate pilotis. Visitors arrive by car, in true machine-age fashion. The stark white exterior wall, with its strips of ribbon windows, has a remarkably smooth, planar quality. This stands in contrast to the fluidity of the interior, which is organized by a multistory ramp that leads the viewer on a gently curving path through a building that is nearly square. The contrast between the sharp angles of the plan and the dynamism of the spaces inside charge the house with a subtle energy.

Ramp and spiral staircase, Le Corbusier (Charles-Édouard Jeanneret) with Pierre Jeanneret, Villa Savoye, c. 1928–31, 82 Rue de Villiers, Poissy (photo: Scarletgreen, CC BY 2.0)

The ramp winds from the entrance up to the salon, a formal interior space that flows seamlessly into the roof terrace outside. Corbu, as he is also known, treated the terrace as a room without walls, reflecting his desire to fully integrate landscape and architecture. The ramp finally culminates in the curved solarium crowning the house, whose rounded enclosure appears to be an abstract sculpture when viewed from below. Seen from the roof terrace, the ramp and cylinder of the solarium echo the forms of the ocean liners lauded in Vers une Architecture. Le Corbusier and Madame Savoye believed in the health benefits of fresh air and sunshine, and considered leisure time spent outdoors one mark of a modern lifestyle. The Villa Savoye’s integration of indoor and outdoor spaces allowed the family to spend time outdoors in the most efficient way possible—the house was, in a sense, a machine designed to maximize leisure in the machine age.

Solarium viewed from the roof terrace, Le Corbusier (Charles-Édouard Jeanneret) with Pierre Jeanneret, Villa Savoye, c. 1928–31, 82 Rue de Villiers, Poissy (photo: a-m-a-n-d-a, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

The Villa Savoye can be understood as Le Corbusier’s refinement of his architectural system, his own personal Parthenon. Its essential geometric volumes embody his concept of the type form, and its careful consideration of procession and proportion connect the building to Classical ideals. At the same time, its clean simplicity and its use of concrete evoke the precisely-calibrated works of engineering so admired by the architect. The Villa Savoye represents Le Corbusier’s re-conception of the very nature of architecture, his attempt to express a timeless classicism through the language of architectural modernism.

Slip and acrylic splatter and drip on these tall clay forms.

Nora Naranjo Morse, The Black, White, and Brown of It, 2006–07, natural colored slip and acrylic on clay, 72 x 10 inches (Art Bridges Foundation) © Nora Naranjo Morse. Speakers: Ibby Ouweleen, Curatorial Associate, Art Bridges and Beth Harris, Smarthistory

An icon of Paris, the Eiffel Tower exhibits the achievements of engineering and science in late 19th-century France.

Gustave Eiffel, Eiffel Tower, built for the 1889 Universal Exposition, Paris, 1887–89, puddled iron, 1,083 feet high. Speakers: Dr. Steven Zucker and Dr. Beth Harris

An explosion of experimentation, this painting celebrates Indigenous abstraction and the labor of Diné weavers.

R.C. Gorman, Untitled, c. 1975, acrylic on canvas, 54 x 60 inches (Art Bridges Foundation) © R.C. Gorman Estate. Speakers: Ibby Ouweleen, Curatorial Associate, Art Bridges Foundation, and Steven Zucker, Smarthistory

His nudity references classical antiquity, but David embodies the ideals and concerns of 15th-century Florence.

Donatello, David, date unknown but likely late 1430s–1440s, bronze, 158 cm high (Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence). Speakers: Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker

Donatello, David, date unknown but likely late 1430s–1440s, bronze, 158 cm high (Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Michelozzo di Barrtolomeo, Palazzo Medici-Riccardi (Florence), begun 1444

Between 1445 and the mid-1450s, Cosimo de’Medici, the most powerful man in Florence, built his family’s palace on a central thoroughfare in the heart of the city. A savvy patron, Cosimo was aware that the appearance of this formidable building, designed by Michelozzo, would reflect upon his family. Although technically private citizens of a republic, in reality, the Medici clan dominated the city’s politics, a fact they shrewdly endeavored to obscure. The architecture projected an image of strength and refinement while drawing calculated associations with the city’s republican government through the rusticated stone of the lowest story mimicking that of the Palazzi dei Priori also known as the Palazzo Vecchio (the town hall). For a public figure like Cosimo, a private house was never private in our modern sense: the Palazzo Medici was a place of business (Cosimo was a banker and de facto ruler of Florence) and bustling social interactions with an open courtyard, visible from the street, leading to the main entrance. High upon an elevated base and visible when the main entry to the palace was open to visitors stood one of the most innovative sculptures of the early renaissance: Donatello’s bronze David.

Donatello, David, date unknown but likely late 1430s–1440s, bronze, 158 cm high (Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Donatello’s hero is remarkable for numerous reasons, not least of which is the sculpture’s all’antica (“in the manner of the antique”) form. In some ways the work epitomizes new trends in early renaissance art: it is the earliest known freestanding nude sculpture since antiquity. Furthermore, it is cast in bronze, a costly medium not generally used for large-scale freestanding sculpture in the medieval era—it would take a Medici to afford such an expense. Although it is a difficult sculpture to date, it was probably finished by the early 1450s. [1] And while no documentation survives for the commission, primary sources confirm that it was displayed in the Medici courtyard by 1469 and was thus likely a Medici commission from the start. 

Goliath’s severed head (detail), Donatello, David, date unknown but likely late 1430s–1440s, bronze, 158 cm high (Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Who’s the naked guy?

The subject of this statue is David, the future king and hero of the Hebrew Bible, who as a youth slayed the giant Goliath and liberated his people (the Israelites) from the tyranny of the Philistines. In Donatello’s sculpture, David’s immaturity is unquestionable: his nude body is that of an adolescent and is sharply contrasted with the heavy beard and maturity of Goliath, whose severed head is at his feet. David’s vulnerability is emphasized by the stone he clasps in his left hand, a reminder that though he holds a sword, he brought down his massive foe with a simple sling-shot. The message here is clear: David triumphed not through physical power, but through the grace of God.

Donatello, David, date unknown but likely late 1430s–1440s, bronze, 158 cm high (Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

While the biblical account (1 Samuel 17) does note that David chose not to face Goliath wearing the armor offered to him by the king, nowhere does it state that he removed his clothes completely. In all earlier images of David, including an earlier marble version carved by Donatello himself, David is clothed. The choice to depict David as completely nude, except for a shepherd’s hat adorned with laurels of victory and elaborate sandals, was unprecedented. 

Spinario, c. 1st century B.C.E., bronze, 73 cm high (Musei Capitolini, Rome; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

So . . . why is he naked?

David’s nudity serves several functions. Exposing his youthful (weak) body overtly reinforces the miraculous nature of his triumph. David is literally bared before God and the viewing public, victorious through God’s will alone. Standing in contrapposto and displaying accurate anatomy, the sculpture also demonstrates the growing interest in humanism, an intellectual movement that looked to the Greco-Roman past for inspiration.

Donatello’s nude is reminiscent of ancient Greek and Roman statues, like the youthful Spinario. This ancient bronze sculpture at the Lateran Palace in Rome had already inspired Donatello’s contemporaries, Filippo Brunelleschi and Lorenzo Ghiberti who both riffed upon the figure in their respective bronze panels displaying the Sacrifice of Isaac created for the competition of the Florentine baptistery doors.

Artemision Zeus or Poseidon, c. 460 B.C.E., bronze, 2.09 m high, Early Classical (Severe Style), recovered from a shipwreck off Cape Artemision, Greece in 1928 (National Archaeological Museum, Athens, (photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

In ancient art being shown without clothing often had positive connotations: ancient Greek and Roman gods and heroes signaled their virtue through their idealized nude bodies. By showing David in the nude, Donatello appropriates this convention. From the point of view of renaissance Christians, David’s nudity would have been seen as an improvement upon the ancient tradition, heroizing a Judeo-Christian subject rather than a pagan one.

Piero della Francesca, Flagellation of Christ, c. 1455–65, oil and tempera on wood, 58.4 × 81.5 cm (Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino)

This points to another key aspect of the work: its original placement upon an elevated column. This reflects a medieval practice of representing pagan cults using the motif of a nude figure—what renaissance audiences would have viewed as an “idol”—upon a column. We see this represented, for example, in Piero della Francesca’s fresco, the Flagellation of Christ, where the Christian savior is tortured while tied to a column topped with a nude “ancient” statue. Placing the biblical hero David in this position may have communicated the triumph of Christianity over pagan Antiquity, making the sculpture both fashionably all’antica and appropriately Christian. 

Donatello, David, date unknown but likely late 1430s–1440s, bronze, 158 cm high (Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

But . . . isn’t he a little too sexy?

When seen from behind, the sex of Donatello’s David is ambiguous. In this patriarchal world, this androgyny may have been yet another reminder of his ineptness for battle. Renaissance Italy was male dominated: power passed from father to son and both religious and secular authorities insisted upon the superiority of men and masculinity. The sexual ambiguity, even effeminacy, of Donatello’s David helps emphasize that the youth’s victory could only be achieved by God’s intervention. When viewed from up close—an experience likely only available to privileged visitors to the palazzo—this androgynous nudity is further complicated by erotic undertones. Goliath’s helmet is adorned by a scene of Eros (Love) riding a chariot and a feather delicately caresses David’s inner thigh, both elements suggest themes of erotic love.

Feather (detail), Donatello, David, date unknown but likely late 1430s–1440s, bronze, 158 cm high (Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Scholars have tied this eroticism to Florentine obsession with youthful male beauty, an interest that is evidenced in numerous works of art and even brought the ire of Florentine preachers who called it a sinful perversion. The fact that the sword, hat, and sandals are of contemporary Florentine fashion and not that of biblical times, suggests a connection to these renaissance preoccupations. Of course, David’s beauty, his desirability, was also part of the biblical tradition. He is referred to as “most beautiful among the sons of men” in Psalm 44 and the name “David” was translated to mean “beloved.” The message would have been clear to renaissance Florentines: Donatello’s David embodies desirability, he is beloved by God and this is the source of his victory.

Donatello, David, 1408–09, marble, 191 x 57.5 cm (Museo Nazionale de Bargello, Florence; photo: Miguel Hermoso Cuesta, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Symbol of Florence, symbol of the Medici (or “let’s pretend we’re not really tyrants”)

By the time the bronze David was created, the hero was already a symbol of the Florentine Republic. Donatello’s marble David had been on display inside of the Palazzo dei Priori since 1416 against a backdrop of lilies, an insignia of Florence. By placing this civic hero in their private courtyard, the Medici claimed for themselves this state symbol, making David a Medici emblem as well as a Florentine one. 

Donatello, David, date unknown but likely late 1430s–1440s, bronze, 158 cm high (Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

For a family of supposedly private citizens of a republican state who were all but absolute rulers in practice, the Medici had good reason to associate themselves with David’s anti-tyrannical symbolism. Cosimo and his family likely wanted all visitors to their palace to regard them—like David—as defenders of liberty. This reading is reinforced by an inscription (now lost) that once adorned the column at the statue’s base:

The Victor is whoever defends the fatherland! God crushes the wrath of an enormous foe. Behold! A boy overcame a great tyrant. Conquer, O citizens!

Donatello, Judith and Holofernes, bronze, c. 1455, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence (photo: Sailko, CC BY 3.0)

Another work by Donatello displayed nearby in the palazzo also supports this message. In the garden adjacent to the courtyard where the bronze David was displayed was the artist’s bronze Judith and Holofernes. Judith was understood to be an exemplar of virtue; like David she was a heroine of the Hebrew Bible who slayed an enemy leader and thus liberated her people. It is likely that Judith and Holofernes was intended as a pendant with the bronze David, the pair working together to visually reinforce the Medici family as defenders of Florentine liberty. 

David for the win

Donatello’s costly life-sized  bronze is often eclipsed in the modern imagination by Michelangelo’s better known marble version. The later artist’s nude colossus, however, owes much to the early renaissance sculptor. An intimate work in a semi-public setting, Donatello gives us a hero for the ages: a youth who does the implausible and therefore achieves the miraculous.

Nicolas Poussin, The Holy Family on the Steps, 1648, oil on canvas, 73.3 x 105.8 cm (Cleveland Museum of Art; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

The sheer repetition of certain subjects can tire even the most ardent student of art history. By 1648 when Nicolas Poussin painted The Holy Family on the Steps countless renditions of the Christian scene of the Virgin Mary, Saint Joseph, and the Christ Child produced over many centuries already existed. 17th-century viewers expected interesting compositions from artists, but also artworks that respected the existing tradition.

Poussin has placed the Holy Family in the foreground of an outdoor setting. The Virgin’s cousin, Saint Elizabeth wearing yellow, sits behind her son, Saint John the Baptist, who is also Christ’s cousin. The younger Virgin Mary holds Christ on her lap. Behind them, Saint Joseph, the Virgin’s husband, sits in shadow wielding an architect’s compass. Poussin has not described the surrounding buildings in much detail, but we can surmise from the columns and Corinthian capitals that their location is classical. No wind disturbs clouds in the blue sky or rustles the leaves of the orange tree behind the fountain. Only the water’s splash and the small movements of the figures enliven the stony environment.

Nicolas Poussin, The Holy Family on the Steps, 1648, oil on canvas, 73.3 x 105.8 cm (Cleveland Museum of Art; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Find the symbol

In Poussin’s oeuvre alone, there are more than a dozen Holy Family compositions and nearly 30 iterations of the subject. [1] For Holy Family on the Steps, Poussin deployed familiar iconography loaded with symbolic meaning and replete with art historical references. Less a work intended to evoke intense emotion from the viewer, Poussin’s Holy Family keeps a commonplace subject engaging by giving the viewer a plethora of references to identify. The painting becomes a site for engagement.

Viewing paintings in early modern Europe was often a social activity among Poussin’s learned and wealthy client base (the patron of Holy Family on the Steps is believed to be Nicolas Hennequin de Fresne, the Baron d’Ecquevilly). While regarding a work of art together, people could contribute to the conversation by listing the symbolic meanings and allusions they identified. Finding associations and related meanings attested to the beholder’s erudition and cleverness.

Because of the iconographic tradition long established in European Christian art, Poussin could expect viewers to immediately recognize the subject of the painting as the Christian Holy Family: Mary, Joseph, and Jesus Christ. Poussin could also assume that the majority of beholders would be able to identify the second child as Saint John the Baptist and the older woman behind him as his mother, Saint Elizabeth. Their presence makes this an extended Holy Family scene, as it were, and enhances the symbolic meaning of the painting.

Saint John the Baptist handing an apple to the Christ Child (detail), Nicolas Poussin, The Holy Family on the Steps, 1648, oil on canvas, 73.3 x 105.8 cm (Cleveland Museum of Art; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Salvation foretold

Between their two mothers, a precociously dynamic Christ Child reaches towards his cousin Saint John the Baptist, who offers him an apple. The sweet interaction reads both as youthful play and simultaneously carries symbolic meaning. In an episode known as The Visitation, when Mary and Elizabeth meet while both pregnant, Elizabeth says the babe in her womb, the unborn Saint John the Baptist “leaped” recognizing The Virgin’s blessed pregnancy. [2] It was an early recognition of Christ’s divinity from Saint John, who would later baptize Christ as an adult, an episode that revealed Christ’s divine nature.

The apple recalls the fruit the first humans, Adam and Eve, stole from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Old Testament Book of Genesis. When they ate from the apple, according to Christian thought, they committed the Original Sin. In Catholic thought, all humans, following Adam and Eve, are born with Original Sin, condemning all humans. In Christianity, it is Christ’s eventual Crucifixion that brings humans a chance for redemption in the afterlife.

So, when Poussin’s Christ Child reaches for the apple proffered to him by Saint John the Baptist, he prefigures his Crucifixion.

The young Christ accepts humanity’s Original Sin and his future sacrifice. In this way, Christ was understood theologically as a “New Adam” and the Virgin Mary as a “New Eve.” The redemption of mankind is foretold through symbolism at the center of Poussin’s painting.

Joseph (detail), Nicolas Poussin, The Holy Family on the Steps, 1648, oil on canvas, 73.3 x 105.8 cm (Cleveland Museum of Art; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Saint Joseph holding an architect’s compass alludes to God’s role designing and planning world order. As Christ’s stepfather, Joseph, who worked as a carpenter, allegorically parallels God the Father. [3] Christ’s salvation of humanity was preordained.

Nicolas Poussin, The Holy Family on the Steps, 1648, oil on canvas, 73.3 x 105.8 cm (Cleveland Museum of Art; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

The Virgin Mary’s many meanings

The importance of the figures is compositionally conveyed by the low horizon line which gives the impression of looking up at the holy figures from below. In the figural composition, the Virgin’s head forms the apex of a pyramid, marking her again as of special significance. In addition to her compositional prominence, Poussin has added many symbolic meanings.

As is iconographically standard in European Christian art, the Virgin Mary wears clothing in the colors of red, symbolic of caritas, the virtue of charity, and blue, indicating divine wisdom. Though monumental in form, the Virgin sits on the ground, an iconographic type known as a “Madonna of Humility,” adding humbleness to the virtues Poussin communicates through compositional choices.

By positioning the Virgin in a seated pose with her foot planted firmly on the ground, Poussin indicates metaphorical meanings ascribed to the Virgin Mary. Her solid supportive stance invokes the common metaphor of Mary as ecclesia, that is as the Church itself, which also supports Christ.

Poussin was not finished. To the above symbolic meanings, the artist added the Virgin as a “throne of Solomon.” The Virgin acts as a throne by holding Christ on her lap. Christ, the divine king, embodies wisdom in Catholicism. In Christian thinking, Christ was prefigured by Solomon, the Old Testament king noted for his wisdom. Therefore, the Virgin became known as the sedes sapientiae, the seat of wisdom, even as the Virgin Mary herself also embodied wisdom.

Vase with greenery (detail), Nicolas Poussin, The Holy Family on the Steps, 1648, oil on canvas, 73.3 x 105.8 cm (Cleveland Museum of Art; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

The foliage also refers to the Madonna’s virtues. The large vase with greenery conveys her role as she who brings everlasting life into the world via Christ. The fountain is associated with baptism and its resulting salvation. Its clear water supplied an easy metaphor for the Virgin’s purity. Learned viewers might also associate the fountain with the “well of living water,” a Biblical verse associated with the Virgin Mary. [4]

Fountain with water (detail), Nicolas Poussin, The Holy Family on the Steps, 1648, oil on canvas, 73.3 x 105.8 cm (Cleveland Museum of Art; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Viewers could also spot references to the Virgin Mary through the architectural design. Though the figures sit outdoors, no entrance or exit can be seen in Poussin’s painting. The stony environs form a hortus conclusus, a closed garden, a metaphor for the Madonna’s virginity, her untouched purity.

The prominent staircase behind Mary alludes to her role as the scala coelestis, the staircase to heaven. As scala coelestis, the Virgin was the path by which God descended to earth in the form of Jesus Christ as well as the route for humanity to ascend to heaven. In Catholicism, worshippers often prayed to the Virgin Mary asking her to intercede on their behalf with God the Father or Jesus Christ.

Left: Fruit basket (detail), Nicolas Poussin, The Holy Family on the Steps, 1648, oil on canvas, 73.3 x 105.8 cm (Cleveland Museum of Art; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0); right: Caravaggio, Basket of Fruit, c. 1595–96, oil on canvas, 67.5 x 54.5 cm (Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Milan)

Allusions to art history

The Holy Family on the Steps treats savvy viewers to not just theological symbolism, but also a bevy of art historical allusions ready to be identified. Though Caravaggio and Poussin were often considered artistic opposites, Poussin quoted the Italian painter’s wicker basket filled with abundant fruit. He has even placed it, as Caravaggio did, anxiously hovering over an edge like in one of Caravaggio’s still life paintings and in The Supper at Emmaus.

Left: Nicolas Poussin, The Holy Family on the Steps, 1648, oil on canvas, 73.3 x 105.8 cm (Cleveland Museum of Art; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0); right: Raphael, Madonna del Pesce (Madonna of the Fish), 1513–14, oil on canvas transferred to panel, 215 x 158 cm (Museo del Prado, Madrid)

For the figural group, Poussin cites Raphael, the 16th-century painter held in high regard in the 17th century. He repeats without exactly copying the Madonna’s sedes sapientiae twisted pose presenting the Christ Child to two figures in profile from Raphael’s Madonna del Pesce originally made for the church of San Domenico Maggiore in Naples. Her firmly planted right foot quotes Raphael’s Madonna del Prato.

Left: Joseph (detail), Nicolas Poussin, The Holy Family on the Steps, 1648, oil on canvas, 73.3 x 105.8 cm (Cleveland Museum of Art; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0); right: Andrea del Sarto, Madonna del Sacco, 1525, fresco, 191 x 403 cm (Basilica of Santissima Annunziata, Florence)

The figure of Joseph, recumbent in shadow on the steps, derives from Andrea del Sarto’s Madonna del Sacco from 1525, which in turn quotes Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling frescoes from 1512. The elder artist had painted the ancestors of Christ on the lunettes over the chapel’s windows. In the biblical figure of Naason’s relaxed recumbent pose behind the Virgin and Child, Poussin found his Joseph.

Nicolas Poussin, The Holy Family on the Steps, 1648, oil on canvas, 73.3 x 105.8 cm (Cleveland Museum of Art; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Intellectual discourse

Teeming with references both religious and art historical, The Holy Family on the Steps is a dense painting. The references, ranging from the commonplace to esoteric, offer viewers many entry points into the discussion. The painting’s greatest delights, however, reside in plumbing its depths.

Poussin, ever an ardent student of literature, antiquity, and art history, supplied artworks for people who enjoyed using details in the painting as springboards, connecting their knowledge to what they could see in the painting. Staid and careful where artists like Caravaggio were spontaneous, Poussin nevertheless provided liveliness, but in the discourse the painting prompted rather than on the canvas.

Found in a cemetery in Jouy-le-Comte, France, these important fibulae tell a story of the fragility of historical knowledge.

Merovingian Looped Fibulae, 6th century, silver, gold, glass, stone, and garnet? (National Archaeological Museum, Saint-Germain-en-Laye). Speakers: Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker

Gentile Bellini, Procession in Piazza San Marco, c. 1496, tempera on canvas, 373 x 745 cm (Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Crammed with figures and teeming with details, the Procession in Piazza San Marco offers the viewer so much to take in that the story that the painting depicts is easy to overlook. The encompassing view, offering the beholder a perspective above the bustle of standing on the pavement, and precise details of costume and architecture, imply a documentary fidelity. But just as maps and other seemingly neutral visual materials make arguments, so too does this city view. No mere reproduction of a recurring city event, the Procession nestles a narrative event within a larger message of the miraculous character of the city of Venice—and the indispensability of the confraternity that commissioned the painting.

Made for the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista confraternity, the Procession was one canvas in a series of nine that decorated the albergo, the board room, of the confraternity’s meeting house. It takes a markedly different approach than the large figures engaged in dramatic action characteristic of Italian Renaissance istoria paintings made in central Italy, such as Masaccio’s Tribute Money. The painting builds its argument through detail rather than through action.

Scene at the piazza (detail), Gentile Bellini, Procession in Piazza San Marco, c. 1496, tempera on canvas, 373 x 745 cm (Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

The scene unfolds in the wide space of the Piazza San Marco, the seat of Venice’s government and the location of the Basilica San Marco, the city-state’s most important church. Its onion domes, multicolored stone façade, and golden mosaics tower above the scores of tiny figures milling in the square. Dominican monks, the odd noblewoman, Venetian senators in red robes, citizens in black, and young men in the striped colorful stockings of the compagnie delle calze portray a range of Venetian residents (though Bellini has mostly excluded resident Jews, Black Africans, and foreign merchants, all of whom lived in Venice during the Renaissance). On the left, women in windows decorated with rugs watch from above. On the right, the procession exits the Porta della Carta, the door connecting the gap between the Basilica San Marco and the pink Ducal Palace.

The reliquary and baldachin (detail), Gentile Bellini, Procession in Piazza San Marco, c. 1496, tempera on canvas, 373 x 745 cm (Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

The procession continues across the foreground like a classical frieze. Members of the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista wearing white confraternal robes carry heavy doppieri, the candlesticks that formed a large part of the brotherhood’s expenses. In the center of the painting, on the same axis as the basilica’s main portal, the brothers transport a golden reliquary under a baldachin adorned with flags bearing the shields of the city’s other large confraternities, the scuole grandi. Inside the reliquary was the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista’s prize possession: a relic of a fragment of the True Cross.

The miracle story

The Procession in Piazza San Marco reads as a cityscape or a scene of a recurring Venetian procession. Nevertheless, its 15th- and 16th-century viewers understood it as an istoria, a narrative painting. Nestled between confraternity brothers in a small gap in the procession to the right of the baldachin kneels a bare-headed man in red. His unobtrusive genuflection is the only indication in the tranquil scene that an event is occurring.

Jacopo de’ Salis kneels before the confraternity’s relic (detail), Gentile Bellini, Procession in Piazza San Marco, c. 1496, tempera on canvas, 373 x 745 cm (Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Confraternity members would have known—and been able to tell visitors to their meeting house—that the kneeling man was Jacopo de’ Salis, a merchant from Brescia, a town in Lombardy (in northern Italy). While on business in Venice, he received word that his son had become seriously injured in a fall. Before hurrying home to Brescia, the merchant paused to revere the confraternity’s relic of the True Cross. When he returned home, he learned his son had recovered miraculously the day of the procession. De’ Salis wrote the confraternity and promised to visit the relic again with his child, reinforcing the confraternity and city as facilitators of miracles. [1] Bellini’s composition renders this crucial miracle so unobtrusive, it’s almost invisible.

An art commission to rival all others

Devotional confraternities in Venice, like others found in medieval and early modern Europe, practiced general charity and provided mutual aid to members (e.g., financial assistance including dowries). In Venice, however, confraternities, known as scuole (singular scuola), performed in civic rituals. They were most visible during processions occurring on religious holidays significant to the state, tracing pathways through the city and inscribing confraternities into civic space.

Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista brothers singing from sheet music (detail), Gentile Bellini, Procession in Piazza San Marco, c. 1496, tempera on canvas, 373 x 745 cm (Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Paintings promote a vision of processions as orderly, but we know from archival records that struggles for primacy among confraternities could lead to arguments, even fistfights during these ceremonial state occasions. The Venetian state conferred the legal designation of “scuola grande,” meaning “large confraternity,” onto four brotherhoods at the time of Bellini’s painting, and among them, competition was intense. [2] Each confraternity sought prominence and primacy in Venice through ceremonial display, expressions of piety, and opulent art commissions. [3] A painting series by the city’s leading artists hyping the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista’s relic displayed in the confraternity’s meeting house conferred immense prestige.

Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista meeting house, Venice (photo: Didier Descouens, CC BY-SA 4.0)

The True Cross fragment brought honor to the confraternity not only as a relic that had touched Christ, but also because of its provenance. In 1369, it had been donated by Philippe de Mézières, the Grand Chancellor of Cyprus, who had received it from the Patriarch of Constantinople. The relic’s origins in the eastern capital of Christianity reassured worshippers of its authenticity. [4] Documented miracles further guaranteed its genuineness.

The reliquary of the True Cross (detail), Gentile Bellini, Procession in Piazza San Marco, c. 1496, tempera on canvas, 373 x 745 cm (Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

In November of 1414, the same year the confraternity’s relic of the True Cross was said to have healed the daughter of member Ser Nicolò Benvegnudo, four members of the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista decided to commission a series of narrative paintings relating miracles the relic had performed. [5] By the end of the 15th century, the Venetian diarist Marin Sanudo claimed the confraternity’s relic was the only one able to work miracles in all of Venice.

Quiet miracles in a holy city

The placidity of the Procession and the calmness of the miracle testify to Venice’s stability as a state and effortlessness as a facilitator of miracles. Indeed, the city-state was known as La Serenissima, “the most serene,” for its political steadiness. Depicting de’ Salis’s homage to the True Cross fragment instead of a more active moment in the story such as the boy’s fall or recovery centers the story on Venice and the act of devotion in the city to the confraternity’s relic. Therefore, active figures and dramatic movement typical of Florentine and Roman istoria would have been counterproductive to expressing Venetian values.

Basilica San Marco (detail), Gentile Bellini, Procession in Piazza San Marco, c. 1496, tempera on canvas, 373 x 745 cm (Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

The painting also allows the brothers to take pride in their confraternity and their city even though they belonged to social classes prohibited from holding government office. Venice restricted government office to a small group of noble families whose names were inscribed in the Libro d’Oro, “the golden book,” in the early 14th century. Citizens, wealthy or not, and professionals, clerical or laborers, were excluded from civic representation. Therefore, confraternities were one of the only ways in which non-noble Venetians could participate in ceremonial life and declare their presence in the city-state. Bellini’s painting shunts the head of state, the doge in an ermine cape and golden robes, to the side of the painting, where the minute figure is easy for the viewer to miss. The largest figures are the confraternity members, all non-noble as required by Venetian law that prohibited nobility from joining scuole.

The doge, a duke, shown as a small figure on the far right (detail), Gentile Bellini, Procession in Piazza San Marco, c. 1496, tempera on canvas, 373 x 745 cm (Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

True history

Bellini’s meticulous recreation of an actual place was not an outlier in the 15th-century Venetian tradition. Other paintings in the cycle reproduce Venetian urban topography with exactitude. The faithful details lend credibility to the depiction of both the city and miracles portrayed in the confraternity’s narrative paintings. [6] But Bellini baldly included a clearly untrue placement for the campanile.

If you stand on the Piazza San Marco today, the space will look mostly the same—except for the campanile, the bell tower, on the right. In real life, the campanile blocks a clear view of the Porta della Carta and Palazzo Ducale. Moving it discretely to the side across from the Palazzo Ducale in the painting let Bellini champion Venice’s marriage of church and state expressed by the ducal palace and basilica joined by the Porta della Carta.

Note how the campanile, the bell tower, has been moved in Bellini’s depiction of the piazza. Left: Gentile Bellini, Procession in Piazza San Marco, c. 1496, tempera on canvas, 373 x 745 cm (Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0); right: Piazza San Marco, Venice (photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

The Procession in Piazza San Marco argues that Venice is a site of miracles so regular that they can occur without disrupting the flow of daily life and civic ritual that guarantee the city’s miraculous efficaciousness. The details reassure the viewer that they witness a true historical account and any changes only serve to portray a greater truth—Venice’s potent union of government and religion—than physical reality could provide.

Thousands of medieval Christians were baptized in this building, all under a glittering mosaic of Christ’s own baptism.

The Neonian Baptistry, Ravenna, 4th–5th century C.E. Speakers: Dr. Steven Zucker and Dr. Beth Harris

Folio 86 verso, The Rutland Psalter, c. 1260, 28.5 x 20.5 cm (The British Library, London, MS 62925)

The 13th-century Rutland Psalter is a glorious illuminated manuscript featuring the Hebrew Bible’s Book of Psalms (hence the name, psalter). It is also generally considered the earliest surviving British manuscript to have a program of apparently secular pictures created in the margins of a religious text that are referred to as marginalia.

Looking at the Rutland Psalter helps viewers today better understand what concepts like “sacred” and “profane” or “religious” and “secular” may have meant to the people who produced and likely used such a book in the Middle Ages. Spoiler alert: these concepts were likely more fluid, and less mutually exclusive, to viewers of the past than now.

From the grotesque to the conventional

Although it is unclear who the original patron was, scholars guess that its earliest owner was a wealthy layperson since psalters were the books most widely owned by that class of people (at least until the later medieval emergence of the Book of Hours). Typically dated to around 1260, the manuscript contains 7 full- or partial-page miniatures and 102 individual marginal designs. These marginalia comprise an odd array of pictorial interlopers, from grotesque inventions to more conventional monsters such as centaurs, dragons, and harpies (a mythical creature, often depicted with the head and trunk of a woman and the body of a bird). Art historian Nigel Morgan posited that 4 illuminators were responsible for the illustrations in the psalter, but no one today can really say for sure how many artists worked on the manuscript in the Middle Ages. [1]

The Rutland Psalter, c. 1260, left: folio 66 verso, Psalm 67, bas-de-page simian riding an ostrich; right: folio 67 recto, Psalm 67, bas-de-page figure (The British Library, London, MS 62925)

As with marginalia generally, the marginal content here is not just surprising in its apparent randomness; it is also, in many instances, suspiciously profane. Consider, for instance, the naked figure on folio 67r (a folio is a page, and “r” refers to the recto, or front page, and “v” the verso, or back of the page). Michael Camille famously argued that he bears a close resemblance to Christ. [2] But he doesn’t behave in a very Christ-like manner. Bending over a mound, the man appears to wave a hand in front of his exposed bum, giving air to what is perhaps a particularly noxious insult intended for the ape astride an ostrich on the opposite, or verso, folio. This ape is fighting back, though; he tilts a long lance toward his offender’s exposed backside.

Folio 67 recto, Psalm 67, bas-de-page figure, The Rutland Psalter, c. 1260 (The British Library, London, MS 62925)

Viewers today might see such imagery as reproachable, vulgar, and even disturbing. But there may be a method to the artist’s madness here. Above the man, the viewer reads the word tympanistriarum, a reference to the drummers of Psalm 67. The artist seems to have taken the word out of context in the Psalm to create a visual pun: the hand gesture of the Christ-figure may not be an attempt to diffuse an offensive odor so much as a drum-beat on his derrière. That is, he appears to act out the text above. Scholars today increasingly believe that such visual word play is not meant to be seen as gratuitous and offensive; instead, it interrupts the viewer and, in so doing, slows down his (or her) reading of the text—inviting them to pause upon the page and meditate more fully on the content of the Psalm.

Punning and verbal-pictorial translation

Punning and verbal-pictorial translation may be the very hallmark of the manuscript’s marginalia. Indeed, the Rutland Psalter’s text contains a number of examples in which the marginal images look like actions or activities described, or apparently described, by snippets of the text they accompany. One of the most striking examples of this center-margin interplay occurs at the opening spanning folios 10v and 11r. Beginning at the bottom quarter of the verso page, fronted by a historiated initial “V” for Verba, the first line of the Psalm reads: Verba mea auribus percipe Domine intellege clamorem meum (“Give ear, O Lord, to my words, understand my cry”).

Two men in tights and short tunics wrestle. Folio 11 recto, Psalm 5, bas-de-page wrestlers, The Rutland Psalter, c. 1260 (The British Library, London, MS 62925)

This phrase is taken literally by the illuminator in the bas-de-page, or lower margin, of folio 11r. Two men in tights and short tunics wrestle; the figure to the viewer’s left grabs the other by his ear. In this case, the ear is given only by force, presumably to remind the viewer of the sense of the text and its appeal to the ear of God. It might also be noted that the figure depicted beside the wrestling pair, just inside of the fold at the foot of the vertical border, stands with his head back and mouth open as if issuing forth the cry (clamorem) on the page above, here transformed into a decorative edging.

Folio 14 recto, Psalm 9, bas-de-page scene, The Rutland Psalter, c. 1260 (The British Library, London, MS 62925)

Another example occurs at folio 14r. Psalm 9 begins on the facing page (folio 13v), about a quarter of the way down the page at a historiated initial “C” for Confitebor. It contains the line: in laqueo isto quem absconderunt comprehensus est pes eorum (“Their foot hath been taken in the very snare which they hid.”) The bas-de-page (bottom of the page) scene depicts a man in a blue garment before one of the many long-necked dragons that populate the manuscript’s margins. The dragon grasps the man’s foot in its mouth, as he clings to the vertical border. The artist has taken the text literally, such that the “foot” (pes) of the man has indeed been taken by a “snare” (laqueo) in the form of the dragon.

Folio 65 recto, Psalm 65, bas-de-page acrobatic figure, The Rutland Psalter, c. 1260 (The British Library, London, MS 62925)

On folio 65r, the bas-de-page contains an image of a figure standing on his or her hands in a sort of somersault.  This is perhaps in reference to the phrase from Psalm 65:12, written just a few lines overhead: Inposuisti homines super capita (“Thou hast set men over our heads”). In this case, the illuminator has depicted a man quite literally super capita (“over head”).

These examples suggest an almost comically direct translation process, in which a perhaps “functionally” literate artist read (or attempted to read) the text on the folio he was to illuminate and used words and phrases as a springboard for his imagination. Such a process was likely spontaneous, or at least subject to less rigorous planning than the full- or nearly full-page miniatures that also populate the manuscript.

A framing device, sometimes ambiguous

We should note, though, that many of the manuscript’s margins are ambiguous, and it is not always possible to read marginal figures on a given folio as cohesive or related to the text they accompany. As a result, scholars generally allow that some margins had a more playful, even decorative function, even if some are inspired by aspects of the text they accompany. This simply suggests the lack of uniformity that dominated artistic approaches to the margin. Ultimately, the marginal figures of the Rutland Psalter are perhaps best described as a second frame—or as, in any case, a framing device. They frame, even mirror, the viewer’s engagement with the text at the center.

Designed for literate lay-consumption, the marginalia of the Rutland Psalter challenged the reader’s comprehension, perhaps in an effort to get him or her to come back continuously and often. After all, lest we modern viewers forget, manuscripts were meant to be looked at repeatedly, used frequently, analyzed closely, and meditated upon again and again. In fact, the Rutland Psalter so enthralled William Morris, the father of the Arts and Crafts movement, that he asked for it on his deathbed.

An unassuming brick exterior belies the luminous early medieval mosaics within.

The Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, 425 C.E., Ravenna, Italy. Speakers: Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker

Geese fly over a cold shore: naturalism and emptiness.

Maruyama Ōkyo, Geese Over a Beach, 18th century (Japan), ink on paper, 176.7 x 372 cm (Gift of Charles Lang Freer, F1898.143, National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution, Freer Collection, Washington, D.C.). Speakers: Dr. Frank Feltens, Associate Director for Curatorial Affairs and Curator of Japanese Art, National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution, and Dr. Steven Zucker, Smarthistory

Join us as we examine this four-paneled screen painting by Maruyama Ōkyo, the 18th-century artist who made realism a part of Japanese art. We discuss how Ōkyo used negative space to depict geese taking flight and how he evoked the feeling of a chilly morning on the seashore. We also muse on the painting’s original use as a sliding door and what the rest of the room may have looked like.

Though small in size, this 12th-century Iranian bowl is filled with rich decoration: a golden sun, planets, and scenes of court life.

Bowl with Courtly and Astrological Motifs, late 12th–early 13th century (Central or Northern Iran), stonepaste, polychrome inglaze and overglaze painted and gilded on opaque monochrome glaze, 9.5 x 18.7 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). Speakers: Dr. Ariel Fein, Visiting Scholar in the visual cultures of Byzantium and the Islamic world, Smarthistory, and Dr. Steven Zucker, Smarthistory

Adopting elements of Coast Salish art and Surrealism, Yuxweluptun paints about the legacies of colonialism.

Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun, Leaving My Reservation to Go to Ottawa and Fight for a New Constitution, 1985, acrylic on canvas, 246.4 x 169.55 cm (Art Bridges Foundation) © Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun. Speakers: Julia Mun, Assistant Curator, Art Bridges Foundation, and Beth Harris, Smarthistory

Soza declares “The Wind Only I Am Afraid Of,” taking on the art establishment and the political establishment as well.

Billy “War Soldier” Soza, The Wind Only I Am Afraid Of, 1969, oil on canvas, 39-1/2 x 29-1/2 inches (Art Bridges Foundation) © estate of the artist. Speakers: Dr. Ashley Holland, Curator & Director of Curatorial Initiatives, Art Bridges Foundation and Dr. Steven Zucker, Smarthistory

Letendre’s expressive, gestural paint application creates an image that seems to be moving, shifting, and surging.

Rita Letendre, Menace (Ramat Gan), 1963, oil on canvas, 64.8 x 81.3 cm (Art Bridges Foundation) © Estate of Rita Letendre. Speakers: Dr. Javier Rivero Ramos, Associate Curator, Art Bridges Foundation and Dr. Steven Zucker, Smarthistory

Landscape and textile are brought together in this painting by fashion designer Lloyd Kiva New.

Lloyd Kiva New, Untitled (Landscape), c. 1980, acrylic and oil on canvas, 90.2 x 86.4 cm (Art Bridges Foundation) © Estate of Lloyd Kiva New. Speakers: Dr. Ashley Holland, Curator & Director of Curatorial Initiatives, Art Bridges Foundation, and Dr. Steven Zucker, Smarthistory