Massacre of the Innocents

Fearing that the infant Christ, prophesied as the new king of the Jews, would usurp his throne, Herod the Great, the king of Judea, ordered the murder of all Bethlehem males under two years old. This violent scene has provided artists the opportunity to flex their melodramatic muscles; the brutal slaughter of infants by Herod’s soldiers is usually shown in the king’s courtyard, with desperate, wailing mothers protesting in vain.  The expressive power of Giovanni's art reaches a feverish pathos in the Massacre of the Innocents. We see infants yanked between soldiers and protective mothers, while other mothers, with swollen breasts, mourn their slain babes or plead for clemency from Herod. The anguish of suffering at the hands of brutal butchers and a cruel tyrant transcends the specific incident to become a universal polemic against injustice. 

Giovanni Pisano’s carved pulpit in the Church of Sant’ Andrea in Pistoia, Italy, is a gorgeous example of densely packed bodies frozen in this barbarous chaos. the Massacre of the Innocents, carved out of marble, is the third panel in the pulpit.