Pre-Rublev: Winged Trinity

The Hospitality of Abraham

(Old Testament Trinity)
Mid-14th century
168 × 144 cm
The Assumption Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin

(Image from icon-art.info/masterpiece)

Yesterday, we looked at Andrei Rublev's masterpiece, and I've found some more material on that, but I wanted to post this image, which dates to a century or so before Rublev's own icon, to show the tradition within which he was working and from which he departed somewhat.

Notable is the presence of Abraham and Sarah, as well as of a young servant (or might it be Ishmael?) slaughtering the calf for the meal, for precisely in ignoring these other three figures lay part of Rublev's innovation. The other part of his innovation lay in removing Christological symbols from the central figure.

Why did Rublev innovate in this way? According to Alexander Boguslawski, an expert on Russian art:

Very few artists before Rublev dared to eliminate all the narrative elements from the story, leaving only the three angels; usually those who did so had to deal with limited space. The results of their efforts did not find general acceptance or many copyists. Rublev was the first to make a conscious decision not to include in his composition the figures of Abraham and Sarah because he did not set out to illustrate the story of the hospitality of Abraham, as did many painters before him, but to convey through his image the idea of the unity and indivisibility of the three persons of the Trinity.

The doctrine of the Trinity, difficult to explain logically, found various interpretations. Some thought that the Trinity consisted of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Others believed that it was just God and two angels. In the 14th and 15th-century Russia, in the period of many heretical movements, the idea of the Trinity was often questioned. The heretics in Novgorod claimed that it is not permissible to paint the Trinity on icons because Abraham did not see the Trinity but only God and two angels. Other heretics rejected the idea of the three hypostases of God altogether. The church fought the heresies with all the means it had -- usually with polemical treaties, but also with force, if necessary. Russian icon painters before Rublev subscribed to the same point of view that Abraham was visited by God (in Christ's image) and two angels. Hence, Christ was represented in icons of the Trinity as the middle angel and was symbolically set apart either by a halo with a cross, by a considerable enlargement of his figure, by widely spread wings or by a scroll in His hand.

In the pre-Rublev image above, the middle figure would seem to be portrayed in the image of Christ, for he is giving the Orthodox sign of the cross, so I assume that the unknown artist interpreted the story as one in which "Abraham was visited by God (in Christ's image) and two angels." Compare this to Rublev's icon:

Andrei Rublev, Hospitality of Abraham

The Old Testament Trinity

(Image from Wikipedia)

Alexander Boguslawski notes some interesting ambiguities in Rublev's painting:

All scholars agree that the three hypostases of the Trinity are represented in Rublev's icon. But there are greatly differing views as to which angel represents which hypostasis. Many see Christ in the middle angel and God the Father in the left. Others see God the Father in the middle angel, and Christ in the left one. The middle angel occupies a special place in the icon: it is set apart not only by its central position, but also by a "regal" turn of its head towards the left angel, and by pointing with its hand towards the cup on the table. Both the turn of the head and the gesture are important clues to the hidden meaning of the icon. Equal among equals, the middle angel has such expressive power that one hesitates not to see in it a symbolic representation of God the Father. On the other hand one cannot fail to notice that the left angel is also essential: two other angels lower their heads towards it and seem to address it. Therefore, if we assume that the left angel is God the Father, the middle angel, dressed in the clothes customarily used in compositions depicting the second person of the Trinity (a blue himation and a crimson tunic), should represent Christ. This amazing and perhaps purposeful encoding of these two persons of the Trinity by Rublev does not give us a clear clue for a single interpretation. Whatever the case, the icon shows a dialogue between two angels: The Father turns to His Son and explains the necessity of His sacrifice, and the Son answers by agreeing with His Father's wish.

In referring to the angel on the "left," Boguslawski is describing the image from our perspective. Seen from the middle figure's perspective, this angel is actually on the right, and one would expect to find the Son in that righthand position, the Father thus being the central figure, but Boguslawski has made some interesting points about ambiguity concerning the precise identification of the three figures -- which might, indeed, be the point that Rublev is trying to convey about the Trinity, that these are the three hypostases of God, not merely God and two angels.

But I leave that for your contemplation.

Meanwhile, take a look at Boguslawski's own art, for he not only comments as a scholar on Slavic art, he paints his own artwork as an artist (and something about his style recalls in some way the style of Terrance Lindall, though the latter's vision is darker).

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.

Hans Blumenberg: Philo Judaeus as Augustine's Predecessor (Curiositas)

Philo of Alexandria

aka "Philo Judaeus"

(Image from Wikipedia)

Hans Blumenberg devotes one chapter of his Legitimacy of the Modern Age to preparing his argument on how curiosity came to be enrolled in the category of vices by looking at a predecessor to Augustine, Philo of Alexandria -- also known as Philo Judaeus (Philo the Jew), who clad Jewish belief in the garments of Greek thought.

Concerning the status of curiosity (Greek: periergia) in Philo's De migratione Abrahami (On the Migration of Abraham), we read the following by Blumenberg:

The Augustinian conceptualization of curiositas had its most suggestive precedent in Philo's allegory De migratione Abrahami, even if we cannot assume that it directly influenced Augustine. Abraham's travels from Chaldea via Haran to Sichem and finally to Egypt give Philo the ground plan for a representation of the spiritual path from self-estrangement to self-appropriation. Chaldea is the land of curiosity (periergia), and specifically in the form of astronomy. Curiosity is understood as the independence of the senses, which have evaded their subordination to the intellect and instead of this deliver man up to what accords with them. Abraham's path leads from sense perception to spiritual wisdom. The sojourn in Haran represents a turning from astronomical curiosity to self-knowledge, which in turn leads through the self's discovery of its ignorance to recognition of God, and finally through this last to recognition of the world as God's work. The requirement of this detour on the way to the cosmos is explained as legitimate because of the Author's 'ownership' of the truth of His work, which can become accessible only through Himself. Philo's God does not, like the Platonic demiurge, find the cosmos already in existence in the form of the ideal reality of an independent objective sphere; rather He Himself produces even the spiritual plan of His Creation, the science of its coming into being.

This is a train of thought that leads to the critical epistemological principle of the identity of verum and factum [truth and fact], to the solus scire potest qui fecit [only he can know who makes (the object)]; but here it still stops with the metaphor of property and its reserved character: Legitimate knowledge can only derive from God, the origin and source of all skills and sciences, and should not try to found itself on unmediated, as it were, unauthorized inspection of the cosmos. The pseudowise men of Egypt stand for the dishonest and unjust claim to have seen 'directly': Their theories about the cosmos rest on the eyewitness claim to truth, since they presume to know the grounds of everything, "as if they had been present at the origin of the cosmos or had even helped the world's master builder with advice in his work."

God's sovereign right to the secret of His creation, which is communicated by Him alone on the condition of knowing and acknowledging His authorship, is one of the most enduring themes that were to enter into the curiositas complex. It found a place in the exegetical question why man came into existence as the last in the order of creation, the answer to which could be, so that he should not witness the work of creation and its secrets. This theme has not outgrown the mythical idea of the gods' jealousy of man. It still plays a role in the ideas of divine majesty held by late-medieval nominalism, to which admittedly man was no longer to submit with humble resignation, but which he would rather oppose with a new epistemological conception of the possibilities left open to him even with this reservation. (Blumenberg, Legitimacy of the Modern Age, pages 284-285).

Blumenberg's quote from Philo critcizing the arrogance of the Egyptian 'pseudowise' men, who talk "as if they had been present at the origin of the cosmos or had even helped the world's master builder with advice in his work," recalls God's criticism of Job, who claims that he is suffering despite having done no wrong for which he should be punished, to which God counters:

Who is this that darkens my counsel
with words without knowledge?
Brace yourself like a man;
I will question you,
and you shall answer me.

Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation?
Tell me, if you understand. (Job 38:2-4, New International Version, 1984; cf. Judaica Press)

God then procedes to overwhelm Job with the complexity of His creation, overtaxing Job's knowledge and implicitly charging Job with ignorance. Job admits his insufficiency:

I am unworthy -- how can I reply to you?
I put my hand over my mouth.
I spoke once, but I have no answer --
twice, but I will say no more. (Job 40:4-5, NIV, cf. Judaica Press)

God then repeats his earlier challenge to take a different tack:

Brace yourself like a man;
I will question you,
and you shall answer me.

Would you discredit my justice?
Would you condemn me to justify yourself? (Job 40:7-8, NIV, cf. Judaica Press)

The point seems to be that Job is far too limited in his knowledge of God's purposes in creation even to question the justice of his own seemingly unjustified suffering. The point is not easily countered, for if God is infinite in his knowledge and wisdom, then how can one knowingly assert that one is suffering unjustly? God might have some good reason for allowing suffering . . . though an innocent one engulfed in suffering might have doubts. At any rate, Job is persuaded:

I know that you can do all things;
no plan of yours can be thwarted.
You asked,
'Who is this that obscures my counsel without knowledge?'
Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me to know. (Job 42:2-3, NIV, cf. Judaica Press)

Job, of course, hadn't made any claims to knowledge of the cosmos, nor had he exhibited much curiosity about such things, but implicit in God's retort about Job's ignorance would seem to be that it is an ignorance invincible, for if Job could provide answers to any of the questions, the rhetorical effect -- grounded in the assumption of Job's ignorance -- would be lessened.

In such a complex of thought, curiosity might well be taken as an affront to God, a presumptiveness that one has the right to know what God has implied that one simply cannot know.

Blumenberg does not cite Job at this point, however, nor does the name "Job" appear in the "Name Index" to Legitimacy of the Modern Age, so I will stop at this point today but perhaps return tomorrow.