Image Details

© Sonia Halliday and Laura Lushington

The joyous return of the dove to the ark is represented on a 15th-century stained glass window (shown here, compare with photo of mosaic) in the cathedral in Ulm, Germany. With arms outstretched, Noah, perched in the chimney of his house resting within the ark, receives the dove. In her beak she holds a branch, silhouetted against the rich blue sky after the tempest. Noah’s wife, right, as well as other members of Noah’s family (now partially effaced), look out from the windows of the house. The ark is represented as a galley, a low, single-decked ship used in medieval times.

In the foreground, the peristent raven, who “went to and fro until the waters were dried up from the earth,” rides on the back of a fox.