Parsing “The Parting” Painting: The Marriage of the Virgin

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More than two years ago Hershel Shanks rang me up about a new book he was preparing: Partings—How Judaism and Christianity Became Two, with individual chapters by some of the world’s leading scholars. I am an art historian with a strong interest in the relationship between the Early Church and Judaism. As I am also head of Art Resource, an extensive visual archive on the history of art, Hershel asked me to suggest some illustrations for the book.

I was glad to help him and proposed a number of images. However, Hershel, being the strong-willed person we all admire and love, rejected the image I most favored for inclusion. It is the one—and only—painting in the entire history of art that fully delineates the actual physical parting of the ways between the Church and Synagogue. Hershel rejected it on the not-unreasonable ground that the work was rather late, c. 1420, and therefore fell outside the normal purview of BAR.

The book is now out, and I can certainly attest to both its beauty and valuable contribution to the field. Being a bit persistent myself, however, I contacted Hershel and reminded him of the painting I had been touting. Perhaps out of fatigue or to indulge me, he relented.

In short, the painting in question purports to show how the physical edifice of the Church literally encompassed the physical edifice of the Synagogue while sharing its foundations. The work is a marvel of architectural iconography, with many spiritual and religious connotations. Throughout there is an unusual recognition of the debt Christianity owes to Judaism, even if its posture is one of supersession.

The painting is the Marriage of the Virgin by Robert Campin, who is also known as the Master of 043Flémalle.¹ Although it dates to about 1420, it depicts the very dawn of Christianity, when the construction of the physical edifice of the church has just begun. At the moment, only the portal of the church stands, for the simple reason that the story of Christ has not yet unfolded. As it does, the Master Builder will return and complete the structure.

At the right, Mary and an elderly, bald Joseph are being married by the high priest Abiathar. They stand at the unfinished church portal, which is built in the Gothic style—an architectural form closely associated with Christianity. The architect-mason, who is just beginning his work, has left some of his tools behind (bottom left): a mat on which to kneel and a board and small boulder, which he uses to tamp down and even out the courses of stone. As the story of Christ unfolds, he will take up his tools and continue his work. That architect-mason—not 040shown—is of course God, the master-builder.

It appears that the Gothic edifice will share the pre-existing foundations of an older building, shown on the left. That building, a centrally planned domical Romanesque structure, is the Temple of Jerusalem. Romanesque is a style that the late Medieval mind associated with the Roman era, which was thought to be the style in which the Jewish Temple was built. The domical structure of the Dome of the Rock, erected on the site of the Jewish Temple, reinforced this notion. Until recently, synagogues were often built in the Romanesque style, Catholic churches in Gothic.

The scene within the Temple represents the legend of the Miracle of the Rod (see sidebar). Mary’s many young suitors have been summoned to the Temple, and each is told to deposit a rod on its altar. One rod will miraculously flower, and its bearer will be awarded the hand of Mary. As a joke the suitors cajole the aged Joseph to deposit a rod of his own, never imagining that his will prevail. When it is Joseph’s rod that flowers, he is embarrassed, thinking himself much too old to be the 046groom designate, and is restrained as he attempts to flee the Temple. It is this event, according to the legend, that is the antecedent to the “Marriage of the Virgin” shown on the right, where the elderly Joseph stands with Mary. The choice of the aged and presumably less than virile Joseph served to buttress the Catholic doctrine of Mary’s perpetual virginity.

The Gothic Church promises to be larger than the Romanesque Temple whose foundations it shares. As the builder continues his work, the fabric of the church will surround, encompass and incorporate the edifice of the Temple, rendering it invisible to the outside eye. The painter has included “sculpted” reliefs on the capitals and spandrels of the Temple. All are prototypes—or harbingers—of the Coming of Christ. In the center spandrel is Abraham’s would-be sacrifice of Isaac, the prototype of God’s willingness to sacrifice His only begotten son, Jesus. The stained glass of the Temple depicts the Creation of Eve and the Expulsion from Paradise, reminding us that in “Eve’s Fall We Fell All,” thus requiring the advent of a new Eve, Mary, who will provide a route back to Paradise through Christ.

Returning to the Gothic portal, on the tympanum—the pointed arch just above the red mitered head of the priest—there is a carved figure of a woman with a round stone on her knee. (See detail of the tympanum, above.) This is Mary. She is normally shown in poses like this with the infant Jesus on her lap. But Jesus has not yet been born! The divine master builder-mason, who is here also a sculptor, will return as Mary gives birth to Jesus and will carve the round stone on her lap into the form of the infant.

To the left side of the seated Mary on the tympanum (to our right as we look at the painting) is a sculpture of Moses holding the Tablets of the Law. His counterpart in the opposite corner would be a sculpted Jesus, Deliverer of the New Dispensation, but as Jesus has not yet been born, that corner is obscured by the angle ingeniously chosen by the painter. Here too, at the appropriate time, the divine sculptor will return and complete His work.

The painting thus depicts the very threshold of Christianity, represented by the unfinished Gothic portal before which Joseph and Mary stand. The Temple is still very much a functioning entity. While the whole painting presages the eventual parting of the ways, we are at the dawn of that process, and here the two are still essentially one.

More than two years ago Hershel Shanks rang me up about a new book he was preparing: Partings—How Judaism and Christianity Became Two, with individual chapters by some of the world’s leading scholars. I am an art historian with a strong interest in the relationship between the Early Church and Judaism. As I am also head of Art Resource, an extensive visual archive on the history of art, Hershel asked me to suggest some illustrations for the book. I was glad to help him and proposed a number of images. However, Hershel, being the strong-willed person we all admire […]