Hi my name is Ayla Lepine, I'm the
Ahmanson Fellow in Art and Religion here
at the National Gallery and today I'm
going to be exploring the question why
is this man depicted twice
and what can that tell us about miracles.
This small painting by Duccio is one of
the earliest in the National Gallery's
collection.
It's a fascinating image which is part
of a much bigger altarpiece. The National
Gallery has three panels from that giant
double-sided altarpiece, which is from
Siena from the Cathedral in the early
14th century. It was constructed between
about 1307 1308 and 1311. The panel that
we're looking at today is most likely
from towards the end of that period. The
three panels that the gallery has are
part of the predella which is the lower
section of that altarpiece. We have an
image of the annunciation
we have our image for today Christ
healing a man who was born blind and
right next to it we have an image which
is called 'The Transfiguration'.
All of these are from the Bible's New
Testament and our story is from the
Gospel of John from chapter nine.
In this image we see something
extraordinary which is really easy to
miss
because it looks like a pretty
unremarkable little figure just here and
this little figure has a stick
has little red boots
has a brown cloak
and has a little carrying case which is
attached to him by a rope.
He's having an incredible miraculous
encounter with Jesus.
So what's happening here is that we have
a crowd who are pressing in on Jesus
behind and all of them are fascinated by
what's happening here.
And here
we have an image of Christ in his blue
robe with little bits of gold edging as
he does something very very strange.
In the story he's just been on the
ground making a paste of soil and his
own saliva.
Then he takes that paste and he rubs it
onto the man's eyes and here we can see
him doing it with just one finger and it
looks very gentle.
Christ is giving this man his full
attention
and this person with his eyes closed is
experiencing this miracle right that
very moment in Duccio's painting.
You might miss that it is the same man
who is just over here.
So what Duccio has done is he's
positioned that figure facing Jesus here
and then turning around 180 degrees in
the next part of the story.
As you can see he's dropped his stick,
his hand is open perhaps in a gesture of
wonder or surprise,
and his eyes are focused on something
that in this little panel we can't see.
You might notice that down below he's
got his other hand in some water which
Duccio has painted beautifully with these
little wavy lines.
That's something called the pool of
Siloam. Duccio depicting this man twice in
this way is relatively rare, however,
in this period people would have been
used to seeing something like a sequence
of narratives in scripture depicted
simultaneously in one image especially
in altarpieces in Pradellas like this
one.
So the opportunity to be able to read
this image
left to right, where we see this moment
and then this moment in the same panel,
is maybe comparable to something like a
comic strip for us today. And notice what
this man is looking at.
This panel which we have in the national
gallery would have also been the next
panel along in that gigantic altarpiece
the Siena Maestà, which I explained
earlier, and so what that man is looking
at
is this miraculous image.
This man is depicted twice.
Jesus himself
across the threshold of this panel is
also depicted twice.
Here we can see him as someone who looks
relatively ordinary, though he has his
gold halo, he has both his feet firmly
planted on the ground, and firmly planted
in buildings and areas that look
surprisingly perhaps like Sienna itself.
Duccio is doing something really clever
here.
He is depicting this moment, this miracle,
in a place that looks awfully like
Sienna. His home city
and the city that people were living in
when they were milling around the
Cathedral and when they were coming into
the cathedral for worship. This is a
familiar space with a familiar story
even though those stories are hundreds
and hundreds of years apart.
So this is an extraordinary image that
shows Jesus with his blue cloak with
that gold edging
and that image connects deeply with the
next miracle that we see in the panel
which is just next to that miraculous
image of Jesus healing the man who had
been born blind.
This image shows something called the
Transfiguration.
This is one of the most precious moments
in the whole of the gospels.
One of the most powerful accounts of the
transfiguration is in the Gospel of
Matthew and what happens there is that
Jesus takes some of his disciples Peter,
James, and John up to a high mountain.
We are no longer in the familiar
surroundings of Siena, in its everyday
life that Duccio has painted with this
extraordinary Biblical narrative.
Here Duccio has rooted this Biblical
narrative in the space of Heaven.
In the realm of some kind of mysterious
threshold, and mountains are really
important in Hebrew Bible and New
Testament accounts,
where Heaven and earth meet. You can see
that by how much gold he's using,
and you can see that in what's happened
to Jesus' robe.
What we saw as blue with gold edging in
the previous panel we now see
shot through with the glory and the
beauty
of gold of heavenly light. Shot through
with this amazing sense of heavenly
radiance and the gospel writer Matthew
he even struggles to put this into words,
"it shone whiter than the brightest light".
It was this beautiful thing which no one 163 00:07:10,720 --> 00:07:15,680 had ever seen before.
And there is a voice in this story,
it's the voice of God the Father himself
from heaven, "this is my Son,
I love him,
listen to Him". So now we have seeing, and
we have hearing,
and we have an everyday insight through
this incredible miracle to what Jesus
can do, and who Jesus is. Here we have an
additional insight
into who Jesus really is, and what he can
do. Because this image,
on the threshold of heaven, shows us
that this person here is none other than
the Son of God. So in the sequence of the
altarpiece
what we have
is an image of this man shown twice,
facing Jesus and then facing away having
been healed and cured,
and then we have Jesus across the
threshold shown twice.
Here,
and here.
And here, like the blind man, he has
somehow been changed mysteriously. So
Jesus in these stories, and Duccio
in his arrangement of these stories,
is showing us
that there is something so precious that
is happening here not only for this
person but also for his community, and
also in the whole realm of Christian
belief about who Jesus is as the Son of
God. Fully human and fully divine.
I think it's so important to speak for a
moment about what might be meant by
blindness here.
There is something so important here
about the way that blindness connects
metaphorically
to the blindness of the community within
which Jesus is operating.
He's saying to people you do not see
spiritually, inwardly,
because you do not love and embrace this
man just as he is.
People come to Jesus and they ask,
whose fault is it that this man was born
blind? Is it his fault? Is it his parents
fault?
And Jesus says it's nobody's fault.
This man is beautiful, and perfect, and
glorious, and gorgeous. A beloved child of
God just as he is,
and yet
so that you can start to understand who
I am,
I am going to heal him in front of you,
like we see this miracle taking place in
the altarpiece in front of us.
We see something
which is beyond the realm of physics and
beyond the realm of expectation, and it's
so earthy in this story. It's soil and
saliva, it's washing in a pool, and Duccio
has chosen to show those earthly aspects
of this story in a very clear way.
And so what might have been the view
about miracles in 14th century Siena?
Miracles were things that, just like I've
described, that might happen, that were
beyond physics, that somehow showed the
abundance of God's love, compassion, and
mercy. There would have been countless
people coming to Siena Cathedral praying
for a miracle in their own lives
inspired by that story.
So for those people at that time, and for
many christians around the world today,
this story is not some ancient strange
idea from another time and another place,
it's a story that can inspire hope today.
But let's be clear especially in terms
of disability and inclusion that Jesus
is not saying that blindness is a
problem.
He's saying that the inner spiritual
blindness of communities that
marginalise and exclude people, that is
the problem.
And He takes the opportunity of
transforming the life of the man who is
born blind, shown twice here, in order to
demonstrate that deeper truth to
absolutely everyone
who is
a beloved child of God in this tradition.
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thank you so much for watching today, and
we'll see you next time.
[Music]