John the Baptist – Art & Theology

Day Trip to Würzburg, Part 4: Museum für Franken

October 30, 2026November 5, 2026 Victoria Emily JonesLeave a comment

This is the final post in my series on religious art highlights from Würzburg, Germany, which I visited on August 28. (See parts 1, 2, and 3.) It took me about fifty-two hours to organize, select, research, write, edit, and format all the content. If you enjoyed the series, would you please consider making a small donation toward this work so that I can avoid setting up paywalls? Thank you! Oh, and since some of you have asked: I offer all my high-resolution photos free of charge for noncommercial use; I just don’t allow reblogging (that is, reproducing these posts in full on a different website).

View from the Alte Mainbrücke (Old Main Bridge), with Festung Marienberg (Marienberg Fortress) in the distance

It was afternoon, and Eric and I had a few more hours left in Würzburg. Thankfully, the rain let up, so after a quick lunch of bratwurst, we trekked over the Old Main Bridge up to Marienberg Fortress. It was about a twenty-minute walk up the stepped Tellsteige to the entrance—quite strenuous for this out-of-shape traveler, and in retrospect, I should have taken the bus, which runs to the top via a different route, but at least I was rewarded with some lovely panoramic views of the city along the way.

Würzburg cityscape — View from the inclined walkway to the Museum für Franken. The red-spired Marienkapelle is on the left, Würzburg Cathedral (with its twin, bannered west towers) is on the right, and just right of center is the gray dome of Neumünster.

Serving as residence of the local prince-bishops from the thirteenth to eighteenth centuries, Marienberg Fortress now houses a collection of Franconian art from the Middle Ages to the Baroque era in its Museum für Franken (labeled “Lower Franconian Museum” in Google Maps and formerly called the Mainfränkisches Museum). Admission is five euros.

The sculptures of the German late Gothic artist Tilman Riemenschneider (ca. 1460–1531), who lived in Würzburg, are the main attraction of the museum, which owns eighty of them—the largest number of any institution. Riemenschneider was an absolute master of his craft, working in both wood and stone. Made to adorn buildings, his stone sculptures were conceived for particular architectural contexts, whereas most of his wood carvings were made for winged altarpieces. His smaller sculptures, by contrast, were intended for private ownership and worship.

In addition to being an artist, Riemenschneider was involved in local politics, serving on the Würzburg town council. During the German Peasants’ War in 1525, he refused to obey an order by Prince-Bishop Konrad von Thüngen to fight the revolting peasants, as he sympathized with their cause. As a result, most of his property was confiscated and he was incarcerated and tortured in Marienberg Fortress for two months. He received very little work for the remaining six years of his life.

The first work of his that I encountered at the Museum für Franken was an Anna Selbdritt, Middle High German for “Anne herself making a third”—an iconographic type that arose in Germany in the early thirteenth century and gained massive popularity throughout the Rhine-Meuse region in the next few centuries. Emphasizing the human lineage of Jesus, it shows three generations seated together: the matronly St. Anne (the name tradition ascribes to Mary’s mother), with her head and neck typically covered; a diminutive Mary, her hair uncovered to signify her virginal status, and often holding a book, signifying her learning and devoutness; and, toddling on his grandmother’s knee, the infant Christ.

Tilman Riemenschneider_Anna Selbdritt — Tilman Riemenschneider and workshop, *Anna Selbdritt*, ca. 1500. Limewood, traces of polychromy.

Here’s another:

A related subject, the Holy Kinship, showing even more of Jesus’s relatives gathered round, is also featured in the museum’s collection, such as in this fragment sculpted by an anonymous artist influenced by Riemenschneider, which shows Mary and Joseph on the left, and Anne and Joachim (Mary’s parents) on the right. The Christ child whom the young Mary used to hold on her lap is missing, as is the book that Anne once held:

Tilman Riemenschneider (circle)_Holy Kinship — Circle of Tilman Riemenschneider, *Parts of a Holy Kinship*, ca. 1505. Limewood, painted.

Jesus’s grandparents are never mentioned in scripture, so I admit, I had never even thought about them until I started seeing them depicted in Holy Kinship groups, and Anne in other contexts. It makes me wonder about how Mary’s mother raised her, and how that shaped the woman she became and how she then mothered Jesus. What lessons of faith did Mary learn from Anne? How did Anne react to the news of Mary being pregnant with the Messiah? What about Joachim? In what ways did Grandma and Grandpa dote on little Jesus? Did they have a nickname for him?

Of course Jesus was part of a larger family unit—extended family was very important in the ancient Near East—but without artists to turn my imagination toward that detail, I had neglected to consider it!

Beside the Anna Selbdritt sculpture is another by Riemenschneider, showing St. Stephen, who can be identified by the stack of stones on his knee. (In art, martyrs are often portrayed holding the instruments of their death.)

Tilman Riemenschneider_Saint Stephen — Tilman Riemenschneider and workshop, *Saint Stephen*, ca. 1520. Limewood, originally painted.

Here’s a handful of other works by Riemenschneider or his circle, from the permanent collection of the Museum für Franken or on long-term loan to them.

Tilman Riemenschneider_Adam — Tilman Riemenschneider, *Adam*, 1492–93. Gray sandstone. Former location: Würzburg Marienkapelle, left side of south portal.

Tilman Riemenschneider_Eve — Tilman Riemenschneider, *Eve*, 1492–93. Gray sandstone. Former location: Würzburg Marienkapelle, right side of south portal.

Tilman Riemenschneider_John the Baptist — Tilman Riemenschneider and workshop, *John the Baptist*, 1500–1506. Gray sandstone. Former location: Würzburg Marienkapelle, buttress to the right of the south portal.

Tilman Riemenschneider (circle)_Madonna and Child — Circle of Tilman Riemenschneider, *Madonna and Child on a Crescent Moon*, ca. 1515. Limewood, originally painted.

Tilman Riemenschneider_Crucifix — Tilman Riemenschneider, *Crucifix*, ca. 1500. Limewood, originally painted.

*Head of Christ*, plaster cast by Andreas Halbig, ca. 1850–60, after an original by Tilman Riemenschneider, 1497 (destroyed 1945)

Tilman Riemenschneider_Mourning Women — Tilman Riemenschneider, *Mourning Women* (fragment from a Lamentation group), ca. 1510. Limewood, originally painted.

Tilman Riemenschneider_Mourning Mary — Tilman Riemenschneider, *Mourning Mary*, from a Crucifixion group, ca. 1505. Limewood, originally painted. (The second layer of paint visible today follows the original color scheme.) Former location: Private house in Acholshausen near Ochsenfurt, original location unknown.

Tilman Riemenschneider_Pieta — Tilman Riemenschneider and workshop, *Vesperbild* (Pietà), ca. 1510. Limewood, originally painted.

And the remaining works below are by miscellaneous other artists from Franconia.

One high-relief wood carving shows the Adoration of the Magi. Look at Balthasar’s feathery headdress!

Another wood sculpture portrays the story from Luke 7:36–50, about the unnamed “sinful woman” anointing the feet of Jesus at the house of Simon the Pharisee, who was hosting a meal. Jesus commends the woman’s act of gratitude, costly love, and hospitality, much to Simon’s consternation. Throughout much of church history, this woman was identified as Mary Magdalene—a view almost all present-day biblical scholars reject. But I use the title the museum provides.

*Christ and Mary Magdalene at the House of Simon the Pharisee*, Franconia, ca. 1510

One of the most moving sculptures I saw shows Mary cradling her dead son in her lap, a devotional image type known in German as the Vesperbild (literally “evening picture”). This image type originated in Germany in the early 1300s, spreading throughout Europe, including, around 1400, Italy, where it took on the name Pietà, Italian for “pity” or “compassion.”

Another image type that originated in Germany is the Gnadenstuhl, variously translated as “Mercy Seat” or “Throne of Grace.” It depicts God the Father holding his crucified Son, with the Holy Spirit as dove in the middle—all three persons of the Trinity.

I plan to write a fully developed article on the Gnadenstuhl sometime in the future, as I’m fascinated by its theological implications, which, as I interpret it (and this is clearer in some versions than in others), run counter to a theology of Jesus’s God-forsakenness on the cross. What if, instead of conceptualizing the Crucifixion as an event in which the Father turned his face away from Christ, we saw the Father as with Christ, supporting and sustaining him, and suffering too? What if we saw the Crucifixion not as a temporary break in God’s triunity, the Father severing fellowship with the Son, the punisher versus the punished, but rather Christ on the cross as the object of the Father’s loving gaze, as he always had been? I have much more thinking and reading and consultation to do on this, as I want to be careful with my words. So for now I’ll share just this one example, and defer further theological discussion until another time.

This stone relief was originally located in the Bürgerspital zum Heiligen Geist (Citizens’ Hospital of the Holy Spirit) in Würzburg, founded in the early fourteenth century by Johann von Steren to provide shelter for the poor and treatment for the sick. Johann also endowed the hospital with vineyards that are maintained to this day, as is a public foundation, which operates senior citizens’ homes and a geriatric rehabilitation clinic. The founder is shown at the bottom left opposite his wife, Megardlis von Steren, their family coat of arms between them. On the middle level, flanking the cross, are Mary and the camel-hair-clad John the Baptist, interceding.

Here’s a (German-language) video the museum made about this Gnadenstuhl:

If you’ve been following my blog since Lent, you’ll recognize this next guy. It’s a Palmesel, literally “Palm Donkey,” mounted by a Christ figure, representing Christ’s entry into Jerusalem the week of his death. It’s not known which German town it comes from, but it would have been affixed to a wagon and wheeled through that town’s streets on Palm Sundays.

(See “The Palmesel (‘Palm Donkey’): A Holy Week Tradition from Medieval Germany.”)

The Museum für Franken majors in sculpture, minors in painting. One pair of paintings I really like is from an early sixteenth-century altarpiece depicting the Nativity and the Adoration of the Magi. On the left, I love how an angel supports the head of Christ so that it’s not lying on the hard ground; he kneels, gently lifts that pudgy little noggin, and cushions it on his lap.

Nativity and Adoration of the Magi — *Nativity* and *Adoration of the Magi*, Franconia, ca. 1510. Wooden panel paintings, originally part of a winged altarpiece.

And lastly, another pair of altarpiece wings—depicting St. Margaret and St. Apollonia. The rest of the altarpiece was destroyed in 1945.

Margaret was an early fourth-century Christian martyr from Antioch of Pisidia. Her hagiography is pretty wild. The most famous legend associated with her is that, when she was in prison for refusing to renounce Christianity, she prayed that God would show her the enemy who was fighting her. Satan then appeared in the form of a dragon and swallowed her whole. But when she made the sign of the cross inside him, his belly burst open, and she escaped unscathed. She is traditionally shown holding a cross staff and standing atop or ripping through a dragon, imaging the triumph of good over evil.

St. Apollonia — Brother Martinus Schwarz, *Saint Apollonia* (altar wing), ca. 1485. Mixed media on softwood. Probably from a chapel in Rothenburg ob der Tauber.

Apollonia was a second-century Christian martyr from Alexandria whose torture included having all her teeth pulled out or shattered. That’s why she’s traditionally shown holding a set of pliers with a tooth in their grip, or, more rarely, a claw hammer. Here she holds both!

These two paintings are by Brother Martinus Schwarz, the guardian (superior) of the Franciscan monastery in Rothenburg ob der Tauber. On several occasions, he was enlisted by Riemenschneider to paint his sculptures.

I hope you enjoyed this little four-part travelogue. I received an earlier request to share more from my art-related travels (on average, I take an international trip every other year, and it always includes art!), including itineraries, and/or recommendations for religious art destinations. Any itinerary would need to take into account how long you have, who you’re traveling with, what your (and your traveling companions’) other interests are, and your budget. I have more stamina than most when it comes to structuring a day out in the city; others prefer a more leisurely pace, or have to adapt to the needs of young kids. In nine days, I toured Frankfurt, Würzburg, Rothenburg, Nuremburg, Munich, and (just over the border in Austria) Salzburg. The trip would have looked different if I were traveling with friends or parents or children.

If you’re interested in traveling to southern Germany and focusing on religious art, hit me up by email, and I’d be happy to share a list of the museums and churches I visited, and what I thought was worth it versus not.

If you’ve been to that region, or live there, feel free to share some of your favorite places or artworks in the Comment field below.

Day Trip to Würzburg, Part 1: Marienkapelle

October 13, 2026October 30, 2026 Victoria Emily Jones12 Comments

All photos in this post are my own.

Late this August, my husband and I flew to Frankfurt, Germany, and from there traveled south, spending nine days in the state of Bavaria. I built our itinerary mainly around religious art I’d been wanting to see, an interest my husband indulges and even appreciates (just not to the same degree I do!).

Bavaria is most associated with the Baroque and Rococo art and architectural styles, which are not styles I gravitate to. I was on the lookout for medieval treasures mostly, but with an openness to surprises.

I planned for us to stop in the city of Würzburg en route from Frankfurt to Rothenburg ob der Tauber because I wanted to see a unique fifteenth-century tympanum relief in the north portal of the Roman Catholic Marienkapelle (pronounced ma-REE-en-kah-PEL-lay), or St. Mary’s Chapel, depicting one of my favorite Gospel stories. More on that below.

Situated in the town’s Marktplatz (market square), the Marienkapelle is a late Gothic place of worship built in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It was heavily damaged by an Allied bombing raid on March 16, 1945—the same raid that, in less than twenty minutes, destroyed 90 percent of the historic city and killed an estimated five thousand people—and was rebuilt and restored in 1948–61.

Various little “swallow shops,” selling gifts and pastries, are built into the exterior base and buttresses.

Because of the building’s size and central location, the Marienkapelle is often mistaken for Würzburg’s cathedral, but it is not: A cathedral is the official seat of a diocesan bishop, and that’s St. Kilian’s, a five-minute walk away. In fact, the Marienkapelle is not even technically a church, according to canon law, because it does not have its own independent parish. It’s legally classified as a “chapel.” However, it is a church in the loose sense of the word, as it hosts regular worship services, administered by the united parishes of St. Kilian’s and Neumünster, which we’ll visit in separate posts.

Thankfully, although the Royal Air Force incendiaries destroyed the timber-framed interior of the Marienkapelle, the heavy masonry portals and recessed entryways largely protected the medieval relief carvings on the exterior.

The tympanum of the main, west portal, through which you enter the chapel, portrays the Last Judgment. Jesus Christ is seated on a rainbow throne, being crowned by an angel. Drawing on Revelation 1:16 and 19:15, two swords protrude from his mouth, the one on his right a (likely mistaken) departure from traditional iconography, which has a lily instead, symbolizing mercy, which acts alongside his justice.

Last Judgment, west portal, Marienkapelle

He is flanked by angels carrying instruments of his passion—a cross, a column and whip—and two others blowing trumpets, which wakes the dead from their graves. Mother Mary and John the Baptist intercede for those rising to judgment.

On Christ’s right (our left) are the blessed, and on his left (our right) are the damned, being dragged by a hairy devil into a gaping hellmouth. Among the latter group are kings, knights, and bishops, showing that wealth and institutional status earn you no favors with God, and that outward acts of piety or noble deeds count for nothing if they proceed out of an impure heart.

I love the detail at the bottom of people’s skeletons taking on flesh as they push aside the lids of their coffins! This is the general resurrection, the promised reuniting of body and soul prefigured in Ezekiel 37.

On the trumeau (central pillar) of the west portal stands a copy of a stone Madonna and Child from around 1441; the original is located inside the chapel. The Christ child holds an apple.

Copy: Virgin and Child, ca. 1441, from the west portal of the Marienkapelle

Another entrance to the church is on the south side.

The south tympanum portrays the Coronation of Mary, an extrabiblical subject that grew out of the belief that if Jesus is the King of kings, Mary is the queen mother. To either side of them are St. Barbara, holding a chalice, and St. Catherine of Alexandria, holding the breaking wheel on which she was sentenced to be executed.

The most striking feature of the south portal is the Adam and Eve sculpture pair by the preeminent German sculptor Tilman Riemenschneider (ca. 1460–1531). Exquisite! Carved in gray sandstone, they are actually copies (all the freestanding sculptures on the exterior are); the originals, from 1493, are in the Museum für Franken, also in Würzburg—which I’ll share about in part 4. Adam and Eve stand on plinths decorated with foliage, sheltered under tabernacles (tower-like crowning structures).

In addition to these, Riemenschneider and his workshop supplied sculptures of the twelve apostles for the buttresses, and of Christ and John the Baptist, who are situated above Adam and Eve. Christ, as Salvator Mundi, holds a globe, and John the Baptist holds a lamb, a symbol of the self-sacrificial Christ, who takes away the sin of the world.

But now, what I consider the most thrilling artwork at the Marienkapelle, immensely amusing, is the Annunciation tympanum in the north portal, carved around 1430.

It’s in the least prominent of all three portals, tucked away off the main square, next to, when I was there, a fence banner advertising a local wine festival. No one was stopping to look at it.

View from the west portal — View from the north portal

Annunciation, north portal, Marienkapelle

But I knew to search it out—this peculiar carving that visualizes the theological idea, introduced in the fourth century and solidified in the fifth, that Mary conceived Jesus through her sense of hearing. Known as the conceptio per aurem, this teaching stems from a typological connection between Eve and Mary: Whereas Eve listened to the serpent’s lies and conceived death, Mary listened to the angel’s truth and conceived life. The teaching presents Mary as a model of attentive listening to God’s word, which produces fruit; for receiving it into ourselves, bearing it about. It also serves to desexualize the encounter between Mary and Gabriel, focusing attention away from Mary’s genital region and onto her head.

Look at how this artist visualizes the conception by ear! God the Father sits at the top center inside a flowery mandorla, blowing into a serpentine tube that’s attached to Mary’s ear. As he does, a gleefully naked infant Christ glides down the tube on his belly like it’s a waterslide—only it’s not water that’s propelling him; it’s the Father’s breath.

Journeying down this transdimensional slide, he twists and turns and plunges right into his chosen mother’s open auditory canal, where the Holy Spirit as dove enunciates a sacred whisper: “You will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus . . .” All three persons of the Trinity are present at this moment—their number echoed by the three-branched lily in the vase on the floor.

Behind Mary, two angels hold up a cloth of state, befitting royalty.

The conceptio per aurem was developed in both the East and the West by Christian writers and preachers such as Ephrem of Syria, Augustine of Hippo, Theodotus of Ancyra, Proclus of Constantinople, Cyrus of Panopolis, Zeno of Verona, Athanasius of Alexandria, and Bernard of Clairvaux. To learn more, I recommend the excellent book Divine Conception: The Art of the Annunciation by Sarah Drummond (Unicorn, 2019) and Proclus of Constantinople and the Cult of the Virgin in Late Antiquity: Homilies 1–5 by Nicholas Constas (Brill, 2003), each of which devotes an entire chapter to the motif.

Also on the exterior of the Marienkapelle are a handful of fantastical creatures in the jambs and archivolts and under corbels, and red sandstone grotesques on the eaves.

Grotesques above the west portal, Marienkapelle

Moving inside, the locally quarried pink and white sandstone columns that support the rib vault down the length of the nave are lovely. So are the post–World War II stained glass windows in the choir. But the main visual attraction is the high altarpiece, painted by an unidentified Franconian artist in 1514.

The central scene, consisting of two panels, shows the Annunciation, set inside a well-appointed domestic interior. Mary is interrupted from her prayers by a ruddy-faced messenger, whose banner bears his greeting: “Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.”

The left wing depicts the Nativity inside a half-built or dilapidated structure that’s exposed to the elements. Mary has laid the infant Christ on the ground, cushioning him as much as possible with her extended cloak. Shepherds peep through the metal bars of the window, craning their necks to see. An ox and ass have front-row seats. Joseph holds a candle, and a trio of angels sing from a song sheet.

The right wing depicts the Adoration of the Magi. The three foreign men of means present gifts to the Christ child while their entourages stand by patiently in the background. As is traditional, one of them is portrayed as Black.

Stay tuned for my next Würzburg post, where I’ll share photos from Neumünster, a church that was on my radar because of the unusual crucifix that hangs above one of its side altars.

Twelve Advent Stations by Mark Cazalet

December 11, 2025December 12, 2025 Victoria Emily Jones2 Comments

Mark Cazalet (b. 1964) is a contemporary artist based in London whose work centers on color and balances empiricism and lyricism. He works across media—painting, drawing, printmaking, and (in collaboration with fabricators) stained glass, etched and engraved glass, printed enamel on glass, tapestries, and mosaics. A major part of his career has been fulfilling ecclesiastical commissions and making sacred art. But all of his work, regardless of subject matter, is shot through with a sacramental impulse.

Last year Cazalet made a series of twelve “Advent Stations” that move circuitously through the story of Jesus’s first coming, marked as it was by mystery, vulnerability, risk, and glory. These include modernized versions of scenes you’d find in traditional Infancy of Christ cycles, such as the Annunciation to Mary, the Annunciation to the Shepherds, the Dream of the Magi, and the Flight to Egypt, but also new ones, drawing us into the grand sweep—sometimes rushing, sometimes quiet—of gospel hope. “The overarching theme,” he told me, “is pregnancy, birth, nurturing, waiting, escape, migration, and finally, in the mistle thrush’s morning song, the greeting of the new day’s limitless potential.”

The artist’s choice of substrate is unique: He painted his stations in oil on domestic wooden objects, such as bread boards, meat and cheese boards, children’s lunch trays, washboards, chapati rolling boards, and a baker’s peel. By using these ordinary boards mainly from home kitchens, Cazalet further situates the biblical Advent story in the everyday. That many of the boards are used for preparing or serving bread underscores Jesus’s self-declaration as “the living bread that came down from heaven,” whose flesh Christians eat ritually as a means of interabiding (John 6).

Cazalet’s Advent Stations debuted last December at his home church, St Martin’s in Kensal Rise, London, where they were installed one per week from Advent through Candlemas. The project was a collaboration with fellow parishioners Richard Leaf, who wrote a poem for each station, and Pansy Cambell, who calligraphed the poems.

That exhibition spawned interest from Chelmsford Cathedral in Essex, where all the artworks and poems are on display from December 1, 2025, through February 2, 2026. The cathedral is already home to two commissioned works of Cazalet’s: the monumental multipanel painting The Tree of Life and an engraved and etched glass window depicting St. Cedd.

The word “station” in the title of Cazalet’s recent series refers to a stopping place along a route. In the Middle Ages, the Roman Catholic Church developed a devotional practice known as the Stations of the Cross, which breaks down the passion of Christ into fourteen distinct episodes fit for contemplation. The idea was that those who could not travel physically to Jerusalem for Lent to walk the Via Dolorosa (the processional route Jesus took to Golgotha) could at least walk the path in spirit, using a series of images as prompts to pause, pray, and reflect.

(Cazalet also made a set of twenty Stations of the Cross in 2024.)

Used by Christians in various denominations, this practice has been adapted for other seasons of the church year. While there are no official Advent Stations or Stations of the Nativity, Cazalet has come up with twelve.

All photos in this article are by the artist and are used with his permission.

Advent Station 1: The Breath of God

A mystical visualization of the Word becoming flesh, the first station has two configurations. In its closed form, it shows the mouth of God blowing through space, the divine breath coalescing around a woman’s uterus to form an embryo, the child who will be called Jesus. Wisps of blue swirl dynamically around this firstborn of new creation.

The triangular shape evokes the Trinity, as the Incarnation was an act involving Father (initiator), Son (enfleshed one), and Holy Spirit (overshadower / inseminating agent).

Advent Station 1. The Breath of God (open) — Mark Cazalet, *Advent Station 1: The Breath of God* (open), 2024

In the exhibition, an attached ribbon instructs viewers, “Lift me.” When you do, the bottom board flips up to reveal a pool of swimming sperm cells, as God created the male gamete needed to make a male child and supernaturally (nonsexually) deposited it into Mary, where it fertilized one of her eggs.

The virginal conception of Christ is a mystery beyond knowing; no amount of scientific head-scratching will bring us closer to understanding the mechanics, nor do we need to. But I like the reminder from this unusual artistic interpretation that all the necessary human genetic material was present—Mary supplying hers, and God supplying the rest. Jesus was not some kind of alien transplanted into a human womb, but rather was made up of all the human stuff we are, and grew by stages inside his mother over a period of nine months. And yet, while fully human, he’s also—marvel of marvels—fully God.

On the round board below, we see that the isolated uterus from the first view belongs to Mary, who lies in bed while Joseph serves as ultrasound technician, shining a light that discloses the still-developing Christ child on a video monitor.

Advent Station 2: John the Baptist on the Beach

The breath/wind motif is subtly carried over into this second Advent station, with sailboats lining the top of the center board.

This scene shows a young John the Baptist playing on the beach, with his parents, Zechariah and Elizabeth, lounging in swimsuits under a nearby umbrella. John crouches in the sand, pouring water from a seashell (the implement he uses to baptize Jesus in many traditional paintings, most famously Piero della Francesca’s) onto toy figurines who have queued up for the affusion. The water cuts a mini river through the sand, alluding to the Jordan.

The two side panels, which show a close-up of an open ear and an open mouth, likely refer to, in his prophetic ministry as an adult, John’s hearing the word of God and proclaiming it. His is “the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord; make his paths straight’” (Mark 1:3). John is regarded as an Advent figure because, by preaching repentance from sin, he prepared the people for the coming of the Messiah.

Advent Station 3: The Annunciation

The Annunciation, portraying the angel Gabriel’s message to Mary that she has been chosen to bear God’s Son, is one of the most frequently depicted biblical scenes of all time. How could any artist possibly make it new?

Cazalet refreshes the encounter by showing Gabriel dipping down headfirst from the heavens, the unconventional orientation perhaps a playful allusion to the topsy-turvy nature of Christ’s kingdom. He reaches across the gap to touch the belly of Mary, a young Black woman in a polka-dot dress who is seated on the floor with her eyes closed, rapt in prayer. This consensual touch is what effects the Incarnation.

Mary wears blue and even exudes a blue aura, blue being her traditional color, associated with heaven (the sky realm) and hope. Gabriel’s skin has a golden sheen—the color of divinity, purity, holiness. The coming together of blue and yellow creates green, symbolizing life, growth, and renewal.

Advent Station 4: Bethlehem Motel

The innkeeper couple in Bethlehem are a cultural invention, biblical scholars tell us, spawned by a misleading English translation of Luke 2:7, which says “there was no room for them [Mary and Joseph] in the inn” (KJV). The Greek word translated “inn,” kataluma, more properly means “guest room”: Because the census had brought many out-of-towners to the area, the guest rooms of Joseph’s relatives were full, but they made space for the pregnant couple in the lower room of the house where animals were kept for the night.

Despite the lack of an innkeeper character in scripture, it has become a popular element in storytelling about the Nativity in art, song, and sermons, as it prompts us to consider whether we are making room for Christ in our busy, overcrowded lives. And not just Christ, but anyone in need—of shelter or other forms of care.

Cazalet shows Mary and Joseph approaching a motel door as the female owner, sympathetic, comes out to greet them. A niche above their heads, hovering like a thought bubble, shows what the couple desires: a place to give birth and to lay their son.

Advent Station 5: The Incarnation (A Blessing Conferred)

The fifth station features an unconventional combination of images. The left board shows Mary lying on her back, holding the wiggly infant Christ above her. She beams with maternal love.

On the right board, an adult Christ, similarly positioned, leans over the dead daughter of the synagogue leader Jairus. “Talitha koum,” Jesus gently instructs, cradling the girl’s head—Aramaic for “Little girl, get up” (Mark 5:41). With his words, she rises back to life.

The central image, a Head of Christ, is painted on a wooden bread plate from Germany—these plates were sometimes also used as church collection plates—whose rim reads, “Gib uns heute unser täglich brot” (Give us this day our daily bread). Carved sheaves of wheat poke out from under Jesus’s pink cloth collar.

“My intention is that Mary’s love for her son as she raised him taught him the care and compassion to want to help a child in extremis,” Cazalet told me. “The man is formed by the mother’s love, and our childhoods set the pattern of our response to others.”

Notice how, from behind the Christ head, the two adjoining boards emerge like wings, suggesting freedom.

Advent Station 6: The Shepherds See the Star

The sixth station portrays the glory of the Lord rippling across the night sky above three shepherds tending their flocks. Content and unassuming, they are gathered round a warm fire when suddenly, an angel appears to announce to them the birth of Christ. One of the shepherds cowers in fear while another gesticulates toward a brightly beaming star in the near distance—rendered with a Tunnock’s milk chocolate tea cake wrapper.

Advent Station 7: The Magi Dreaming

Having followed a star to Jerusalem from their home back east, the magi enter the court of Herod to inquire where they can find the newborn king of the Jews whom the star heralds, to pay him homage. Herod hadn’t heard of such a king, but immediately he feels threatened—“king of the Jews” is his title—and, unbeknown to the visiting dignitaries, decides to crush this young rival. After consulting with Jewish scholars, he discerns Bethlehem as the birthplace. He divulges this information to the magi and asks them to report back once they’ve found the child so that he, too, can honor him. He hides his true motive under a lie.

The magi have a transformative encounter with Jesus in Bethlehem. Falling asleep after that momentous day, they receive a warning from God not to return to Herod. So they avoid him on their way back home.

As in medieval visual treatments of the Dream of the Magi, Cazalet has the magi sharing a bed. (There’s nothing salacious about it—it’s just a compositional practicality, to show the three men in one space, having the same dream at the same time.) Their toes peep out from under the covers. That surface, by the way, is flat—Cazalet skillfully creates the illusion of convexity through painting, suggesting bodies underneath.

Beside the magi’s heads are three small personal objects: earbuds, glasses, and dentures, which allude to the proverbial principle “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.” “I was musing if this trinity of pilgrim searchers were perhaps aspects of the one true pilgrim, parts of a single whole disciple,” the artist told me.

Advent Station 8: Herod Syndrome

Thwarted by the magi, Herod fumes with rage. He will not be dethroned by this so-called messiah. So he orders his soldiers to kill all the boys in Bethlehem aged two and under, thinking that Jesus will be among them. In his self-obsession, he cares nothing for the good of the people; he cares only for the consolidation of his own power.

Station 8 is Cazalet’s modern take on the Massacre of the Innocents. At the helm of a computer keyboard is a presidential figure launching a missile on whomever he has deemed the enemy, while other likeminded autocrats—I believe that’s Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong Un, Vladimir Putin, and Adolf Hitler—look over his shoulder approvingly, their faces reflected endlessly in mirrors using a technique called mis en abyme (“put in the abyss”). This panel, the transferring surface of a baker’s peel, sits at a height to emphasize the pompousness of rulers like Herod, who see themselves as above others and above the law.

Such an attitude can have dire consequences. “Below we see the devastation of a civilian population, defenceless against the technological onslaught,” Cazalet describes, “and the perpetual streams of migrants fleeing who knows where to be vilified as more foreign mouths to feed.”

The power mania that gripped Herod, that led to his lashing out in violence, is still alive and well today in national and global politics.

Advent Station 9: The Flight to Egypt (Forced Migration)

To protect their son from Herod’s murder decree, Mary and Joseph flee with him across the border to Egypt. Cazalet reimagines their flight through the lens of today’s refugee crisis. In station 9, the Holy Family boards an inflatable raft, braving choppy seawaters in search of asylum. They’re bathed in a menacing red.

On the adjoining panel, border patrol officers, with flashlights and batons, stand on the shore, seeking to bar the entry of strangers into their land.

Advent Station 10: The Exiles Return

Egypt grants refuge to the Holy Family, and they settle there for an undisclosed period of time—until Joseph receives word from an angel that it’s safe to return to their homeland.

Station 10 shows the family arriving at sunset in their beloved Nazareth, all their belongings reduced to what could fit in a single backpack. As they approach a tree-lined boulevard, Jesus clings to his mother’s back, looking behind at where they’ve come from. He has not yet known this town but will come to love it. He will call it home until his ministry beckons him beyond it more than two decades later.

Advent Station 11: Faithful Waiting and Watching (Anna and Simeon)

This is my favorite of all the stations. While the Presentation of Christ in the Temple is standard fare in Christian art—showing Mary handing Jesus to Simeon, a devout Jew interpreted by most artists as a priest, forty days after Jesus’s birth, with Joseph and the prophet Anna standing off to the side—Cazalet isolates the elderly Anna and Simeon, zeroing in on their faithful act of waiting for the Messiah.

Illuminated by candlelight, Anna knits a scarf, communing with God in the solitude, while Simeon fingers a string of prayer beads. Their eyes are weary and downcast, and yet they possess a steadfast hope that their Savior is on his way.

Linking their two spaces is the ark of the covenant, a sacred wooden storage chest plated in gold and topped by two hammered-gold cherubim. Containing the tablets of the law, Aaron’s rod, and a pot of manna, the ark was kept in the holy of holies, the innermost sanctum of the temple, where it signified God’s presence.

Waiting can often feel useless—like nothing’s happening or will ever happen. But Anna and Simeon continued to wait on the Lord, to count on his promise. And finally, before they died, they were granted the grace to see and to hold the One they had so fervently longed for: the Christ, Emmanuel, “God with us.”

Advent Station 12: The Mistle Thrush Greets the New Day

The Advent path we’ve just walked has included an unplanned pregnancy, persecution, and displacement but also miracles, play, and surprise.

Cazalet’s Advent Stations end with a bird in a tree, singing its heart out as a pink and yellow dawn spreads across the sky. The twisted branches become streamers, blowing as if in celebration. (There’s that breath of God again!) Out of the bird’s beak shoots light.

The board that forms the grassy ground is incised with knife marks, perhaps suggesting woundedness—although maybe it’s a turning over of the soil to promote new growth.

The flame-like hues in and around the tree evoke the burning bush of Exodus 3, from which God spoke his name: I AM THAT I AM.

This Advent tree, bare yet lively, calls us to embrace each new day as a gift from the One who is and was and is to come, remembering how Christ came to show us who God is and to feel and heal our brokenness, and he will come again to make all things new.

The Advent Stations by Mark Cazalet, with accompanying poems by Richard Leaf rendered in calligraphy by Pansy Cambell, are on display at Chelmsford Cathedral in eastern England through February 2, 2026. They are available for sale, but until they’re purchased, Cazalet wants to show them in other churches and cathedrals. They’re tentatively scheduled for exhibition in Southwark Cathedral in London during Advent 2026.

Advent, Day 9: Baptism of Repentance

December 8, 2025 Victoria Emily Jones1 Comment

The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ.

As it is written in the prophet Isaiah,

“See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
    who will prepare your way,
the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
    ‘Prepare the way of the Lord;
    make his paths straight,’”

so John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And the whole Judean region and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him and were baptized by him in the River Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the strap of his sandals.I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

—Mark 1:1–8

LOOK: Waiting for the Messiah by Sister Kim Ok-soon

Sister Kim Ok-soon_Waiting for the Messiah — Sister Kim Ok-soon (김옥순 수녀), *메시아를 고대하며* (Waiting for the Messiah), 2014. © Daughters of St. Paul.

LISTEN: “Hallelujah Sang the People” by Bruce Spelman, on You Don’t Know What You’re Paddling In (1972); reissued on the anthology album All God’s Children: Songs from the British Jesus Rock Revolution, 1967–1974 (2023)

John the Baptist came onto the earth
He came by natural birth
Though his parents, they were old and they were gray
John the Baptist called unto the crowds:
“There’s gonna come a day
When Christ the Savior comes down from the clouds!”

John the Baptist went down to the stream
His thoughts were like a dream
Yet he was sure that Christ was soon to come
The people gathered round at Jordan’s side
Where they could be baptized
And no one who came there would be denied

Refrain:
“Hallelujah!” sang the people
God the Son is coming down
“Hallelujah!” sang the people
Our Savior’s coming down

Jesus Christ will come down to the earth
A lowly man by birth
And yet he truly is the Son of God
He will come to earth to set us free
From sin and misery
Oh, and still his life will end in tragedy

But his message will be heard abroad
The teaching of the Lord
And the people will believe the words he speaks
He must surely be the holy Son
The prophet said he’d come
The Father, Son, and Spirit, all are one [Refrain ×2]

Roundup: Restful Advent; preparing the way; walking with the Holy Family

November 25, 2025November 29, 2025 Victoria Emily Jones1 Comment

ADVENT SERIES: Restful Advent by Tamara Hill Murphy: Tamara Hill Murphy [previously] is one of my favorite spiritual writers, her thoughtful words and curation of resources having served as a well of inspiration for me over the years. Each year, similar to Art & Theology but with the sensibilities and expertise of an Anglican spiritual director, she publishes a new daily Advent and Christmastide guide through her Substack, Restful, running this year from November 30 to January 5. Each post in the series includes lectionary readings, art, music, a prayer, and a simple practice to help us notice God’s presence during these waiting days. This time around, the Daybook will feature excerpts from Claude Atcho’s new book Rhythms of Faith along with ideas from The Liturgical Home by Ashley Tumlin Wallace and some of my own formerly published art commentaries.

“The Daybook is a way to pay attention to Christ’s three arrivals—then, now, and still to come—and to walk through December with a quieter heart and a stronger hope,” Murphy writes.

Murphy is offering Art & Theology readers a 50% discount to Restful using this link, which brings the subscription cost down to $4/month (let it run for two months if you want to receive the full Christmastide Daybook) or $32/year, which will give you access to her year-round content. The offer expires January 5, 2026.

+++

BLOG POST: “The Sacred Journey of Advent” by Ashley Tumlin Wallace, The Liturgical Home: “Advent,” writes Wallace, “is a season of preparation, for the coming of Christ at Christmas, and also for His return in glory at the end of time.” This is a great introduction to the season that kicks off the new church year.

+++

SONGS:

One of the scripture texts of Advent is Isaiah 40:3–5:

A voice cries out:
“In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD;
    make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be lifted up,
    and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
    and the rough places a plain.
Then the glory of the LORD shall be revealed,
    and all flesh shall see it together,
    for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.”

The Gospel-writers Matthew (3:3), Mark (1:3), and Luke (3:4) all see this exclamatory figure as John the Baptist, who told people to prepare for God’s coming by repenting of sin, since holding on tightly to ways of unlove erects barriers to God’s entry into one’s life. Here are two songs based on this Advent passage.

>> “Prepare the Way” by Maverick City Music and Tribl, feat. Chandler Moore and Siri Worku, on Tribl I (2021): This song repeats, again and again, the Advent mantra “Prepare the way,” embedding John the Baptist’s invitation deeply into hearts and minds. Its tag beseeches Christ to come with the fire of purging, the rain of refreshment, and the oil of blessing. To welcome this coming, this transformation and growth, we need to decenter ourselves, ceding to God the place of primacy, from which he works our good and his glory.

>> “Prepare the Way” by Christopher Walker, on Rise Up and Sing, 3rd ed., vol. 3 (2009): This 1991 song is by Christopher Walker, a church music composer, lecturer, and choral conductor originally from the UK but now living in Santa Monica, California. Published by OCP (Oregon Catholic Press), it would make a great song for a children’s Advent choir.

+++

2018 SERIES: Advent Caravan: Walking with the Holy Family by Sarah Quezada: I learned about Sarah Quezada’s work at the intersection of faith, justice, and culture through Tamara Hill Murphy (see first roundup item) in 2018, when Quezada published a five-part series reflecting on the likelihood that Mary and Joseph traveled to Bethlehem for the census not alone but in a caravan. Interweaving personal story, biblical interpretation, and current events, Quezada considers how the holy couple’s experience in the final months of Mary’s pregnancy connects to the reality of people on the move seeking hope, peace, joy, and love today.

While the series is not hosted online, I received permission from Quezada to reproduce it here.

Advent Caravan by Sarah Quezada Download

On Instagram, Quezada also shared a photo of her friend’s Advent mantel, where she combined figurines from her various nativity sets to form a “caravan” of travelers.

+++

YOUTUBE PLAYLIST: Jouluradion Hoosianna: Jouluradio is a Finnish radio station that broadcasts annually from November 1 to January 6, playing all Advent and Christmas music. Since 2012, every year they premiere a new arrangement and video performance of the popular Scandinavian Advent hymn “Hoosianna” (Hosanna, an Aramaic expression meaning “Save now!”), which Lutheran and Catholic churches in Finland sing on the first Sunday of the season. Based on Matthew 21:9, its lyrics greet the approaching Christ, affirming his identity and craving the deliverance only he can bring:

Hoosianna, Daavidin Poika,
kiitetty olkoon hän!
Kiitetty Daavidin Poika,
joka tulee Herran nimeen.
Hoosianna, hoosianna,
hoosianna, hoosianna!
Kiitetty Daavidin Poika,
joka tulee Herran nimeen.

Hosanna, Son of David,
Most blessed Holy One,
Hosanna, Son of David,
Who comes in the name of the Lord!
Hosanna, hosanna, hosanna
In the highest!
Hosanna, Son of David,
Who comes in the name of the Lord!

This hymn was written by the German composer, educator, and piano and organ virtuoso Georg Joseph Vogler in 1795 while working in Sweden as court conductor as well as tutor to the crown prince Gustav IV Adolf.

The Jouluradio commissions, which the station has compiled in a YouTube playlist, encompass a range of genres, including jazz, hip-hop, choral, pop, and electronic. Below is a list of previous years’, of which I’ve embedded the two asterisked ones on this page. Jouluradio typically releases their annual “Hoosianna” the day before Advent, so 2025’s will likely be posted this Saturday. [HT: Gracia Grindal]

2024: Ánnámáret
2023: Sniib
2022: Music students at Metropolia University of Applied Sciences in Helsinki
2021: Katri Helena
*2020: Chamber choir of Vaskivuori Upper Secondary School, arr. Jonna Vehmanen (soloists: Josefina Inkiläinen, Iris Kovalainen, Marie Selonen, Krista Schröter)
2019: PastoriPike
2018: Nina Tapio and Katja Lappi
2017: Tuure Kilpeläinen
2016: Miscellaneous contributors
*2015: Sointi Jazz Orchestra, arr. Jukka Perko (I don’t really understand the narrative in the video. I think the man is remembering a time in his childhood when he got lost in the woods, and then was found by his mother?)
2014: Lenni-Kalle Taipale and Jesse Kaikuranta
2013: Kerkko Koskinen Kollektiivi
2012: Rajaton

“Dialogue at Midnight: Elizabeth to John” by Sister Maura Eichner, SSND (poem)

June 20, 2025 Victoria Emily Jones1 Comment

Degas, Edgar_Pregnant Woman — Edgar Degas (French, 1834–1917), *Pregnant Woman*, modeled ca. 1896–1910, cast 1920. Bronze, 16 3/4 × 5 3/4 × 5 5/8 in. (42.5 × 14.6 × 14.3 cm). Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

My son, from the chalk
hills of this old flesh
how you have sailed
beyond the waters of
your father’s doubt.

I feel the small skiff
of your body. Yesterday
you leaped (rapids or
waterfall) when young
Mary walked into my arms.

What we women know.
And how much we keep
within the heart, secret
as the honeycomb that is
your skull growing in me.

My son John, trust this
first solitude. Here in the
ancient cave of my body,
sail inland water
safe from followers,

kings and dancing girls.

This poem appears in After Silence: Selected Poems of Sister Maura Eichner, SSND (Notre Dame of Maryland University, 2011), copyright © the Atlantic-Midwest Province of the School Sisters of Notre Dame.

In anticipation of the Feast of the Nativity of John the Baptist on June 24, I offer this tender poem by Sister Maura Eichner in which the elderly Elizabeth speaks to her son, John, while he’s still in utero. She senses his life will end early and wishes to keep him safe forever, away from the burdens and perils of a prophetic vocation, away from Herod’s order of imprisonment, away from the lethal spite of Herodias and her daughter-pawn, Salome, whose dancing trophy of choice is John’s head on a platter.

Elizabeth is faithful to God and God’s will—just yesterday, in the company of her also-pregnant cousin Mary, she praised God for the coming Messiah whom even the fetal John recognized, leaping. But as great an honor as it is that her son has been chosen to herald the Messiah, her maternal instinct is to shield and protect him. In the dark of midnight, while her husband, Zechariah, is asleep, she whispers her fears rolled up in a charge, instructing John to savor the shelter of her womb while he still can, as soon he will enter the world’s wilderness and eventually preach himself to a martyr’s death.

For scripture texts that inform Sister Maura’s “Dialogue at Midnight,” see Luke 1 and Matthew 14:1–12.

Sister Maura Eichner, SSND (1915–2009), was a Catholic nun, poet, and professor of literature and creative writing. Born Catherine Alice Eichner in Brooklyn, New York, she took vows with the School Sisters of Notre Dame in 1933 at age eighteen. In 1943 she was assigned to teach in the English Department at the College of Notre Dame of Maryland (now Notre Dame of Maryland University) in Baltimore, where she continued until 1992, serving also as department chair. She published ten books of poetry during her lifetime, including The Word Is Love (1958) and Hope Is a Blind Bard (1989), and maintained correspondence with such writers as Flannery O’Connor, Richard Wilbur, Katherine Anne Porter, and Eudora Welty. She experimented with a diversity of poetic forms and subject matter and disliked religious poetry that is redolent of “thin piety” and “decoratively sweet nosegays,” she told The New York Times in a 1959 interview.

Advent, Day 9: Pave Every Road

December 9, 2024 Victoria Emily JonesLeave a comment

LOOK: Shine Forth Upon These Clouded Hills by Nathan Florence

Florence, Nathan_Shine Forth Upon These Clouded Hills — Nathan Florence (American, 1972–), *Shine Forth Upon These Clouded Hills*. Oil on canvas, 30 × 40 in.

LISTEN: “Pave Every Road” by Caroline Cobb, on A Home and a Hunger: Songs of Kingdom Hope (2017)

Pave every road with repentance
Bring the proud heart low
Let the humble heart sing
Break down all your walls, your defenses
Swing wide your gates
For the coming of the king

Lo, he has come to rebuild the ruins
Lo, he has come, set them captives free
I know he has come to bind up the broken
It’s the year of his favor
The year of Jubilee

People livin’ in the darkness
Lift up your heads and see the sun
I see a new day dawnin’
It brings good news for everyone

I see the sun risin’
I see the sun risin’
I see the sun risin’

One day we’ll all hear a trumpet
He will return with reckoning
I’ll follow my king into glory
Who here is comin’ with me?
Who here is comin’ with me?
Who here is comin’ with me?
Yeah!

I see the sun risin’
I see the sun risin’
I see the sun risin’

Get up, get ready
Get up, get ready
Get up, get ready
For the king to come

Who here is comin’ with me?

“Make Way” by Brent Newsom (poem)

December 8, 2024December 8, 2024 Victoria Emily Jones1 Comment

Isaiah 40:3–5

This panting land
hawks up roadblocks
over ground hell-bent
against the premise
of a path. Desert
of rock, not dunes.
Hot wind
rattling leaves
of a distant, lone
acacia tree,
scraggly signpost
pointing everyway
into the craggy, cave-
laden wilderness.
Boulders big enough
to cast a shadow
one might shelter in,
or try, in the sun-fried
afternoon. The grade
grows steep
as the valleys deepen
like the dark of death.
Runnels of loosened
smaller rocks where rain
must once have rushed—
rain, in such a place.

What wildness welcomes
a road? What valley
straightens its spine,
what mountain stoops
from its jeweled throne?
But look: a path
flat and straight
through the jagged
crags and ravines.
A route between
two backwaters—
road enough
for a man to walk
beside a donkey,
on which might ride
a woman with child—
from Nazareth away
to Bethlehem. A way.

Originally published in Remembering That It Happened Once: Christmas Carmen for Spiritual Life All Year Long, ed. Dennis L. Johnson (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2021). Used by permission of the poet.

Brent Newsom is a poet from central Oklahoma. He is a recipient of the Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award in poetry from the organization Poets & Writers and the Foley Poetry Prize from America magazine. He wrote the libretto for A Porcelain Doll, an opera based on the life of deaf-blind pioneer Laura Bridgman, and is the author of Love’s Labors (CavanKerry Press, 2015), which was a finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award in poetry. His poems have also appeared in the Southern Review, the Hopkins Review, Windhover, Relief, and other journals.

Advent, Day 8: A Messenger in the Wilderness

December 8, 2024December 8, 2024 Victoria Emily Jones2 Comments

LOOK: John the Baptist, Angel of the Desert icon

John the Baptist served as a bridge between the old and new covenants, calling on people to repent of their sins and produce good fruit in preparation for the arrival of the Messiah. “The kingdom of heaven is at hand!” he vigorously proclaimed on the banks of the river Jordan. “Get ready.”

Eastern Orthodox icons sometimes portray John the Baptist with wings, as the word “angel” means “messenger.” God had announced through his prophet Malachi, “See, I am sending my messenger [mal’āḵ] to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight—indeed, he is coming, says the LORD of hosts” (Mal. 3:1). The Hebrew word, mal’āḵ, that is translated as “messenger” in this passage is translated elsewhere in the Old Testament as “angel.” Christian commentators see this prophecy as fulfilled in John the Baptist.

The iconography of John the Baptist as Angel of the Desert/Wilderness first started appearing in the sixteenth century and is present only in the East. In addition to having two wings, he wears camel skins, an allusion to his asceticism (Matt. 3:4). He usually holds an unfolded scroll bearing his words from Matthew 3:2—“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near”—as well as a poteiron (liturgical chalice) in which lies a naked Christ Emmanuel, evoking the Eucharist. John points to Christ, the source of our salvation.

Sometimes it is John’s own severed head that lies in the chalice instead. This variation references his martyrdom, commemorated each year on August 29.

I’ve compiled a range of John the Baptist, Angel of the Desert icons that include the Christ child in a eucharistic cup. They are all from seventeenth-, eighteenth-, or nineteenth-century Russia; many are in private collections, and a few are in the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.

LISTEN: “What Is the Crying at Jordan?” | Words by Carol Christopher Drake, 1950s | Tune: ST. MARK’S BERKELEY, an Irish melody from Danta De: Hymns to God, Ancient and Modern, 1928 | Performed by the Miserable Offenders on Keepin’ the Baby Awake: Music for Advent and Christmas, 2012

What is the crying at Jordan?
Who hears, O God, the prophecy?
Dark is the season, dark our hearts,
and shut to mystery.

Who, then, shall stir in this darkness,
prepare for joy in the winter night?
Mortal, in darkness we lie down, blindhearted,
seeing no light.

Lord, give us grace to awake us,
to see the branch that begins to bloom;
in great humility is hid all heaven
in a little room.

Now comes the day of salvation;
in joy and terror the Word is born!
God comes as gift into our lives;
oh let salvation dawn!

The “crying at Jordan” in the first line of this modern hymn refers not to weeping but to a loud uttering—that of John the Baptist preparing the way for the Messiah through the preaching of repentance. When, in response to John’s ministry, the priests and Levites asked him who he was, he declared, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ as the prophet Isaiah said” (John 1:23; cf. Isa. 40:3; Matt. 3:3).

The third stanza refers to Mary’s pregnancy, echoing the closing couplet of the poet John Donne’s “Annunciation” sonnet: “Thou hast light in dark, and shutst in little room, / Immensity cloistered in thy dear womb.” This is an idea that many Christians, both before and after Donne, have mused on and marveled at.

Thank you to my friend Peggy, who introduced me to this remarkable Advent hymn!

Advent, Day 8: A Voice Cries Out

December 10, 2023December 17, 2023 Victoria Emily Jones1 Comment

LOOK: Baptism by Water by John Patrick Cobb

At the 2021 Christians in the Visual Arts (CIVA) conference in Austin, Texas, I got to experience local artist John Patrick Cobb’s Ikon Chapel, a traveling, custom-built wooden structure housing twenty of Cobb’s egg tempera paintings depicting his friends, family, and neighbors as saints and prophets in our modern world. The young and the elderly, farmers, water well drillers, artists, teachers, nurses, Holy Cross brothers, custodians, the unhoused, people with disability or mental illness—these are among those he honors in paint and gold leaf.

Baptism by Water is, along with its companion piece, Baptism by Fire, the largest painting in the series, at over six feet long. It is a lakeside scene portraying John the Baptist—the long-haired, bleach-blonde guy at the far right—calling folks to repentance. Several men climb down the rocky shoreline to enter the cleansing waters and be raised to new life. The models are all associated in real life with water—surfers, plumbers, fishermen. And this is a local setting: Hippie Hollow on Lake Travis in Central Texas, a famous nude swimming hole.

Jesus, says Cobb, is the young man with the black hair and black trunks. Cobb deliberately made him indistinguishable from the others to emphasize his full humanity. He looks beyond John the Baptist, perhaps mentally preparing for the solitary forty-day fast in the desert he’s about to embark on.

In the wall text in the Ikon Chapel, Cobb describes the seated, shirted man in the foreground as reminiscent of the Gerasene demoniac (Mark 5:1–20):

The figure in the near ground, clothed, was a man who lived in the nook of the sea wall in Galveston and slept in the nearby graveyard at 61st Street. On the worst winter days I would bring him a coffee, and finally asked him one day if I could include him in my painting. He would sometimes drink himself into a frenzy and yell and scream at the cars in horrific anger. His leg had been broken and had healed in a precarious angle. I felt as though if there were anyone who deserved the peace and the Holy Spirit, it would be him.

At the bottom right, one of the figures twists away, rejecting John’s call. The model’s name is Jonah, so Cobb wanted to use him as a Jonah figure, resisting (at least initially) the divine plan.

In the background Adam and Eve are skinny-dipping.

Detail, Adam and Eve — Detail with Eve and Adam in background

Detail of a local unhoused man with a leg impairment and alcoholism, for whom the artist wishes God’s peace

I was fortunate enough to get to know Cobb a bit over lunch one day while I was in Austin, and then later at an outdoor gathering he and his wife, Tina, hosted on their property. At the time, he was preparing for an extended trip to Italy to restore some Renaissance frescoes in a village chapel.

To learn more about this remarkable body of work, see the book Chapel Ikons: Biblical Meditations on Living the Spiritual Life in the Modern World (Treaty Oak, 2020), which reproduces all twenty-five paintings in full color with detailed commentaries by William Y. Penn Jr. The postscript says that Cobb and Penn are looking for a permanent institutional home with resources to preserve the chapel ikons for public viewing and study and that if interested, you should contact wpenn@me.com.

I also commend to you the article “Art on Board: John Cobb’s Panel Paintings Hit the Texas Highways” by Ginger Henry Geyer from Image no. 47 (Fall 2005), and for a quick video tour of the Ikon Chapel, see the first forty seconds of this video from Austin’s Mexic-Arte Museum.

LISTEN: “A Voice Cries Out” by Nicholas Andrew Barber and Ken Canedo, based on Isaiah 40:1–11 (2020)

Refrain:
A voice cries out in the desert
Come prepare the way of the Lord
God is coming, make straight for him a highway
Come prepare the way of the Lord

Every valley shall be exalted
Every mountain shall be made low
Then shall the Word of God be known
All the earth shall proclaim
The glory of the Lord [Refrain]

Go upon the highest mountain
Zion, herald of good news
Lift your voice, cry out with all your soul
Jerusalem, proclaim
Glad tidings in the Lord [Refrain]

Have no fear, O cities of Judah
Here is your God
See, the Lord is coming now with power
Our God is here
The mighty and the strong [Refrain]

Like a shepherd, he feeds his flock
He gathers the lambs
See, he carries them gently in his arms
So tenderly
With a mother’s love [Refrain]

This post is part of a daily Advent series from December 2 to 24, 2023 (with Christmas to follow through January 6, 2024). View all the posts here, and the accompanying Spotify playlist here. “A Voice Cries Out” is not on Spotify.