Bible Art
The Meeting at the Golden Gate
Artist: Giotto
1304-06
Painting
Many of the episodes depicted within Padua’s Capella degli Scrovegni (Arena Chapel) fresco cycle hinge upon a moment of heightened emotional tension, either given in the context of some form of a departure or entailing some form of encounter or meeting. The Meeting at the Golden Gate, which forms the last episode in the top register on the south wall, is an example of the latter.
What Giotto manages to achieve is to imbue the scene with a sense of truthfulness and intimacy. Immediately prior to this moving meeting between Joachim and his wife Anna, Joachim, while sleeping, receives a vision from an angel who tells him that his wife had conceived a daughter, Mary. That particular episode, The Vision of Joachim, is depicted immediately prior to The Meeting. Joachim is then told to go and meet his wife at the Golden Gate of Jerusalem.
The Miracle at Cana
Artist: Wilhelm Borremans
1717
Painting
The wedding at Cana is the name of the story in the Gospel of John at which the first miracle attributed to Jesus takes place. In the Gospel account, Jesus, his mother and his disciples are invited to a wedding at Cana in Galilee. When his mother notices that the wine has run out, Jesus delivers a sign of his divinity by turning water into wine at her request. The account is taken as evidence of Jesus' approval of marriage and earthly celebrations.
Borremans painted this ceiling fresco for the Church of Santa Maria dell'Ammiraglio ("The Martorana"), in Palermo, Sicily. The Cana Miracle (Jesus turns water into wine) has been favored in Christian art from the earliest times. In the 4th century it was depicted on many sarcophagi, and it was a common subject in medieval and Renaissance art.
The ceiling fresco adopts a more modest version of the di sotto in su style popular at the time in larger Italian churches. The device allows the artist two points of emphasis. Jesus' gesture to the jars dramatically "below" is one, and the bride placed at the exact center of the composition is the other.
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