medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
On 12/26/12, Jim Bugslag wrote (in part):
> Christ's first bath is quite different. The bathing scene came to occupy a more important position in Nativity images of the Eastern church. It is included in the Arabian Gospel of the Childhood of Christ, but the doctors of the Western church do not mention it. Images of Christ's bath are allusions to his humanity. A few such images survive from before the Iconoclastic period. It has been suggested that the origin of the theme should be sought in Egypt: a large Coptic stone relief of the late 4th century shows the bathing scene alone (now in the Coptic Museum, Cairo). An inscription in an 8th-century fresco of the Nativity in the Church of San Valentino in Rome names one of the women bathing Christ as Salome, suggesting some conflation with the presence of a midwife at Christ's birth. In any case, the bathing scene becomes quite typical of Eastern images of the Nativity, at least from the 5th century. Although Schiller does not mention it, I have read somewhere that the topos of Christ's first bath (which later was incorporated into scenes of the Birth of the Virgin) emulated accounts of the birth of Alexander the Great, although I have no idea how the transference came about.
>
Very probably the transference was not from Alexander the Great but rather from the iconography of the washing of Dionysos after his birth, a mythological construct that first appears in the first century CE and that may not be much older than that. See Glenn W. Bowersock, "Infant Gods and Heroes in Late Antiquity: Dionysos' First Bath", in Renate Schlesier, ed., _A Different God? Dionysos and Ancient Polytheism_ (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011), pp. 3-12 and plates I-IX. For a 1st-century textual reference not cited by Bowersock, see this in Plutarch, _Lysander_, 28: "But those of the Thebans who had remained outside, taking the city on their left, advanced upon the rear of their enemy, at the spring called Cissusa. Here, as the story goes, his nurses bathed the infant Dionysus after his birth; for the water has the colour and sparkle of wine, is clear, and very pleasant to the taste." (Bernadotte Perrin's translation for the LCL).
Since washing the newborn is one of the things that midwives do, the presence of midwives at the Nativity in the Protoevangelium of James and in its Latin descendant the Infancy Gospel of Matthew will have furthered popular acceptance of this scene. For another example of one of the women at the bath identified inscriptionally as Salome (one of the midwives of the Infancy gospels), see this detail of a twelfth-century Nativity scene in the Karanlık kilise (Dark Church) at Göreme Salome at right):
http://tinyurl.com/ccyh6ro
A distance view of the scene as a whole:
http://www.pbase.com/dosseman/image/41566358
Meg also asked "When and where found?". Jim notes that the bathing scene "becomes quite typical of Eastern images of the Nativity, at least from the 5th century" onward. So, at a minimum, such scenes will be found in places within the cultural orbit of Byzantium, in that broader sphere characterized by Obolensky as the Byzantine commonwealth. In what one is accustomed to consider "the West" this will include, _inter alia_, Byzantine and immediately post-Byzantine Italy (as in this very early eighth-century detail from a now dismembered Nativity mosaic in the Oratory of John VII in Rome <http://tinyurl.com/bnebgk4>
or the earlier eighth-century fresco in the catacomb church of San Valentino mentioned by Jim). Another Western locale with similar influences would be twelfth-century Sicily with its Greek-speaking patrons and Greek-speaking artisans. One of my images in that post for 25. December is from George of Antioch's church in Palermo, the basilica di Santa Maria dell'Ammiraglio; the Cappella Palatina in the same city furnishes another instance <http://tinyurl.com/caj2eqg>.
Elsewhere one finds isolated instances. One is on an historiated corbel forming part of the Nativity reliefs on the later twelfth-century facade of the église primatiale Saint-Trophime in Arles <http://tinyurl.com/c59zrhb> (note the similarity to representations of the baptism of Clovis!). Some of Italy's more outstanding painters of the later thirteenth and earlier fourteenth centuries employ specifically Byzantine schemes and motifs (as opposed to merely working in the much more widespread Italo-Byzantine style). For bathing the infant Jesus see this predella panel by Duccio di Bondone for his great Maestà for the cathedral of Siena (betw. 1308 and 1311; now in the National Gallery in Washington, DC) <http://www.wga.hu/art/d/duccio/maesta/predel_f/pre_f_c.jpg>. Pietro Cavallini's strongly Byzantine late thirteenth-century Nativity of Christ mosaic in Rome's basilica di Santa Maria in Trastevere lacks the bathing scene but his Nativity of the Mother of God mosaic on the same arch has the corresponding bathing scene that Byzantine painters adapted for this subject from standard representations of Christ's Nativity <http://www.wga.hu/art/c/cavallin/mosaic/1scene.jpg>.
"When and where" also include later fourteenth-century Bohemia (see the expandable image here of a Nativity by the Master of Vyšší Brod <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_Vy%C5%A1%C5%A1%C3%AD_Brod>) and late fourteenth- / early fifteenth-century Austria (see the expandable image here of a Nativity by the Master of Salzburg <http://www.wga.hu/html_m/m/master/zunk_au/nativity.html>).
This probably only scratches the surface. And, of course, I'm not an art historian.
Best,
John Dillon
> > From: Cormack, Margaret Jean <[log in to unmask]>;
medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
> >
> > I've NEVER seen the baby Jesus being bathed before! Art historians on the list, how common
> > is this motif? When and where found?
> > Merry Christmas all,
> > Meg
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