Amos 8.1-12: A Basket of Fruit

The fruits of summer are enticing. Peaches are at their peak in July and August (in the northern hemisphere). Watermelons, blueberries, and raspberries are all part of summer. Those may not have been the exact fruits that Amos saw, but the result would have been the same: just looking at the fruit would give you a taste of summer (Amos 8:1-12). 

Students (and teachers!) know that as those fruits ripen it means that summer is moving on toward fall. It's not always a great feeling. You wish for what has passed. You want more time to do the things you haven't yet done over summer vacation. You do your best to live in the moment, not thinking about the change of seasons that is to come. 

Amos' vision is that feeling exponentially increased. The end is near, alright. But it isn't the end of summer vacation. It's way more serious than that. The end has come upon my people Israel, God says. It won't be pretty. 

A basket or bowl of fruit is a typical painting subject. And sometimes it's just a bowl of fruit. But for other artists (notably of the Dutch school) the bowl of fruit becomes a symbol with similar overtones to the Amos story. 

The basket of fruit here is by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. Known for creating paintings with dramatic lights and darks, the artist has used none of that here. the basket sits against a neutral background on what appears to be a wooden shelf. Historians aren't sure why the painting was made. Was it to prove the artist's ability to paint realistically (notice the small shadow under the basket indicating it is jutting out slightly over the edge of the shelf)? Was it for a particular spot in the artist's house - or a patron's house? Was it meant to be hung on a wall or above a door, perhaps? Maybe the shelf under the basket mimicked an actual shelf or door molding. 

Caravaggio. Basket of Fruit. 1597-1600. Oil on canvas. Milan: Pinacotheca Ambrosiana.

Though the basket looks like you could reach into the painting and choose a piece of fruit to eat, you might not want to choose the apple. If you look closely you can see that a worm has been there before you. Even in this beautiful assemblage of fruit, the end is coming. Leaves are starting to wither, and some bear holes that indicate insects of some kind have been here. 

The end has come upon my people Israel, God says. If you look closely, you can see it coming. 

For thoughts on Luke 10:38-42, click here. 

Isaiah 55.1-9: This is Not Bread

The prophet asks, "Why spend your money on things that aren't bread?" (Isaiah 55:1-9) Why spend your money on things that don't sustain life? Why exchange your work for things that don't satisfy? The world is full of things that look like they sustain life. There are many things for which we work that ultimately do not satisfy. But those things can be so attractive that we forget they aren't life-sustaining or ultimately satisfying. Dutch still life painters created an entire genre of paintings that model the prophet's question.

Seventeenth-century still life paintings show us beautiful arrangements of flowers, photorealistic depictions of silver goblets, blue and white Delftware and tablecloths that make us want to get out an iron and ironing board. There is lobster and bread, lemons and oysters, peaches and pastries. There are cherries, strawberries, bunches of grapes, and wheels of cheese. The food looks delectable. Good enough to eat, even 400 years later.

Clara Peeters. Still Life with Cheeses, Artichokes and Cherries. c. 1625. Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Clara Peeters, the only Flemish woman artist known to have specialized in still life paintings, used mostly local foods - cheeses, artichokes, cherries, bread - in the work shown here. It might be an illustration for a local farmer's market or restaurant. It might be. But it isn't.

As are many still life paintings of this period, Peeter's painting is a reminder of the transience of the things of this world. The artichoke, sliced in half, is already starting to brown. The bread and cheese are sitting out getting hard and stale. One of the cherries has been eaten, the pit and stem lying on the table by the sliver of artichoke.

The food won't last. It will not ultimately satisfy. Eat this food, and you'll be hungry again. Why spend your money on things that aren't bread? Why exchange your labor for things that won't ultimately satisfy you? The prophet offers an alternative. Keep reading Isaiah and find out what it is.

This week on Art&Faith Matters on Facebook...the generation of women artists who came after Clara Peeters.

For thoughts on Luke 13:1-9, click here.

John 6.1-21: Bugs at the Picnic

"Dinner on the Grounds" is one more way of saying "church picnic". Whether spreading food on a blanket on the ground or using boards placed across sawhorses, the idea is one of sharing food outdoors in congregational fellowship. It's an idea that Jesus embraced in the gospel reading for Pr12/OT17/P +8 (John 6:1-21). The crowd sat down and passed around fish and bread.

The artists who have interpreted this story usually show throngs of people in the landscape and somewhere in the crowd Jesus, several disciples and often the boy whose lunch was the foundation of the feast. The paintings usually don't show things that many of us would associate with an outdoor picnic - heat, humidity, rocks, hard ground, scratchy grass...and bugs. Aren't there always bugs at a picnic? Grasshoppers, ants, flies and other often unidentifiable creepy-crawlies.

Seventeenth-century still-life painter Georg Flegel took the John 6 picnic out of its narrative context - there are no people and no landscape - but still made it a religious painting by including...a bug.

Georg Flegel. Still Life with Stag Beetle. 1635. Oil on Basswood. Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne, Germany. WRM 2824.

Specifically a stag beetle. That is the creature in the lower left corner marching toward the fish, huge mandibles leading the way. The stag beetle gets its name from those waving mandibles which resemble the antlers of a stag. And the stag has long been a symbol for...Christ. Pliny the Elder in his Natural History (8.41) identified stags as the enemy of serpents, drawing them out of their holes and trampling on them; the parallel with Christ was then obvious. The stag beetle is gathered into the symbolism by it's association with the stag.

But, believe it or not, Christ is also associated with the beetle. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, referred to Jesus as the "good scarabeus" (Egyptian Mythology and Egyptian Christianity, Samuel Sharpe, London, 1863, p. 3). Scarabs are amulets carved or modeled in the shape of the beetle (usually identified as Scarabaeus sacer), which was sacred in ancient Egypt. In the Septuagint, Habbakuk 2:1 is translated: For the stone shall cry out of the wall, and the beetle out of the timber shall answer it. The meaning is disputed, but Ambrose, Augustine and others adopted the "beetle" translation and associated the beetle with Christ.

Other German artists, including Albrecht Durer, arguably the most famous German painter of his day, used the symbol. There is a stag beetle teasing the dog in Durer's The Virgin among a Multitude of Animals (1503, Pen and ink and watercolor, Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna). The artist also put a stag beetle on the step in the lower right corner of his 1504 Adoration of the Magi.

Albrecht Durer. Adoration of the Magi. 1504. Oil on wood. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.

Flegel includes onions and wine in his still life, but it is the inclusion of the stag beetle that would have led a contemporary viewer to see this as a religious painting. The meal is fish and bread, and the host is Jesus Christ, just as the gospel of John told the story. It's the bug at the picnic that tells the story.

For thoughts on 2 Samuel 11:1-15, click here.