Andrei Rublev: Winged Trinity

Andrei Rublev, Hospitality of Abraham

The Old Testament Trinity

(Image from Wikipedia)

Over at the Milton List, the scholar Paul Miller, author of the article "John Gower, Satiric Poet" (in Gower's Confessio Amantis: Responses and Reassessments (1983), edited by A.J. Minnis), has called our attention to Andrei Rublev's winged Trinity, which dates to the 1420s and hangs in the the State Tretyakov Gallery, also known as the National Museum of Russian Fine Art, which is located in Moscow.

I think that I've previously seen reproductions of this icon without ever having given it my full attention, but I now see that there's an entire tradition, at least in Russia, of presenting the Trinity with wings, as this website reveals.

As the title "Hospitality of Abraham" indicates, this tradition finds inspiration in the story related in Genesis 18 and 19 that begins by referring to "the Lord" (Yahweh, Genesis 18.1) appearing to Abraham, but quickly shifts the reference to "three men" (shloshah anashim, Genesis 18.2), and later refers to the two of the men who go forth to destroy the city of Sodom as "two of the angels" (shnei hammalachim).

The icon portrays the moment when Abraham has extended hospitality to the three 'men' by inviting them to a meal provided by him. The original story says nothing about wings, and so far as I recall, angels in the Bible are never explicitly described as winged (correct me if I'm wrong), but because Christian tradition depicts angels as having wings, then Rublev paints this 'Trinity' with wings.

Technically, this Trinity doesn't present a winged Jesus, for the 'Son' in this image would be pre-incarnational, but it might be presumed to be depicting a winged Christ, depending upon when one considers the Son to have been anointed as Messiah -- Milton, for example, puts the anointing prior to the fall of Satan and presents it as the act that precipitated Satan's rebellion.

As for Rublev, I don't know that he was the first to paint the Trinity as winged, for I don't have time to further investigate this tradition today because I've got to finish some editing and also some last minute student grading.