Nativity with Isaiah and Virgil

Nativity with Isaiah and Virgil

5 x 7 inches

blank interior

white envelopes

This illumination shows Mary and Joseph adoring their newborn Son, with their trusty donkey gazing on from the stable. In the margins below, the Serpent coils and writhes, because this is the day of his defeat. My mascot Harold Rabbit trumpets away at the left.

The two flanking panels hold two prophets of Christ, one pagan, and one Jewish. On the left stands the great Old Testament prophet Isaiah, holding a part of his famous Messianic prophesy: “The virgin shall conceive and bear a son.” (Isaiah 7: 14)

On the right stands Virgil. He holds a scroll bearing a line from his poem the Fourth Eclogue (c. 42 BC), which reads, “For you, child, the earth untilled will pour fourth.”  Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue tells of a time when a savior child will be born, bringing fruitfulness and peace to earth. Starting in the late Roman Empire, this poem came to be seen as a pagan prophesy of Christ. Eusabius of Caesarea records a speech by Emperor Constantine himself entitled “To the Assembly of Saints” in which he argued for a Christian allegorical interpretation of the work. That interpretation proved popular for the next millennium.

Virgil’s association with messianic prophesy led him through medieval mystery plays, scholarly treatises, and fantastical conversion stories. In the fourteenth century, Dante Alighieri gave Virgil a starring role as his guide through Hell and Purgatory in The Divine Comedy. In fact, during The Purgatorio, the soul of the Roman poet Statius tells them that it was reading the Fourth Eclogue that led him to Christianity.  (Probably artistic license on Dante’s part, as this is not attested to elsewhere.)