The Adoration of the Magi and the Battle of Antietam

Artists: Fra Angelico and Fra Filippo Lippi (ca. 1440 – 1460). Samuel H. Kress Collection, National Gallery of Art. Downloaded December 2024.

The Occasion: August 2012
 
One month before the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Antietam, my son and I happened to visit the Antietam battlefield in Maryland. We began at the Dunker Church and then, on foot and by car, followed the battle as it spread across the landscape. 

Photo and text: downloaded December 2024

The Painting
 
Later that day, or possibly the next, we went to the National Gallery of Art. As usual, we separated: John likes to take in as much as possible; I tend to find a handful of paintings to contemplate at leisure. The tondo by Fra Angelico and Fra Filippo Lippi caught my attention, and I lingered. I caught the eye of a docent walking by, and she stopped.

​“Do you see the man who sees the star?” she asked.

“No, please show me.” 

This led to a conversation in which she explained the symbolism—the iconography—of the painting. It was one of those rare moments when the need-to-know encounters a willing guide.

The Man Who Sees the Star

The Poor

​The docent was tiny, with short, gray hair, and she talked with quiet authority; she reminded me of the actor Linda Hunt. She confessed to not knowing the precise meaning of the figures among the ruins—poor and outcast, obviously; possibly lepers. Whoever they are, they are invisible to the crowd pushing downhill.

That day they were for me the dead of Antietam waiting for God to restore them to life and to bring them into the fellowship of the Kingdom and the communion of the saints.
 
The Pomegranate

The docent asked me if I understood the meaning of the pomegranate on the Christ Child’s thigh. I had not noticed it. Its red flesh is (she said) a symbol for the crucifixion, its many seeds an emblem of the resurrection. The pomegranate was thought to be the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden, the fruit of the tree of knowledge—good and evil, happiness and pain, trauma and joy: the burden we are born to carry, for ourselves and others; the infinite burden the Lord took upon himself in Gethsemane and Golgotha.
 
 
Star and Pomegranate
 
Do you see the man in the painting--
the one in the procession
who alone has seen it
shining directly overhead?
Hands raised, fingers spread,
half in surprise, half in worship,
he’d like to stop and ponder
but is jostled by the crowd,
all of them pushing
downhill towards what they
are able to imagine—a father,
a mother, an infant on
her lap—and what they cannot:
on the child’s thigh, the red-fleshed
fruit, half-peeled and bloody.
     Agape Review, 8 Dec 2021
 
The Peacock and the Cow
​

A peacock, symbol of immortality. roosts on the roof of the stable, an apt symbol of our everyday world—folks at work, the horses being fed and shod in the rich smell of manure and hay, the stolid horned cow, with the pretty fringe hanging between her horns, all oblivious to the scene in the drama of redemption playing before us. 

​Christmas 2021
 
Months fly by, the older you become--
the day of thanks gives way to boisterous Christmas,
the turkey drumstick then the Christmas drum.

Years fly by, the older you become.
Healthy today, tomorrow a fatal symptom,
a gasp for breath, a fall. Enjoy the rush

as life flies by. The older you become,
each day of thanks is a joyous Christmas.

******

Below is a depiction of the painter in threadbare clothing, humbly worshipping the Savior. This figure also represents us as our contemplation of the painting becomes an act of worship.

​Adapted from my Christmas greeting in 2021. Posted 24 December 2024.