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The Spreading of God’s Cloak
Pierre-Marie Dumont
The Presentation of Jesus in the Temple (1304–1306)
Giotto (c. 1266–1337)
The return of God’s glory
The Presentation in the Temple is a distinct narrative moment drawn from Giotto’s chef-d’œuvre: the grand fresco cycle that enlivens the Scrovegni Chapel floor to ceiling with the story of salvation. The Presentation depicts a critical juncture within this broader historical sequence.
Since its establishment, the Temple in Jerusalem was the locus of the divine presence, the dwelling place of God amongst men. However, shortly before the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in 587 b.c., the glory of the Lord departed from the Temple and the ark of the covenant vanished from history. Upon their return to the holy city after long years in exile, the Jews constructed a new Temple. Each stone was laid with expectant longing—that the glory of God might one day return.
“Today the living Ark of the covenant is ascending the steps that lead up to the Temple,” wrote the Benedictine abbot Prosper Guéranger. “Let us be attentive to this great mystery.” The focal point of Giotto’s fresco is Simeon’s rapt expression. We are witnessing the moment of his great recognition: he perceives Yahweh’s definitive return in the gaze of this poor and vulnerable child. Having watched and waited with tears and sighs, this moment unlocks the meaning of his entire life. The Nunc Dimittis canticle overflows from the depths of his spirit.
Foreshadowing the Passion
The Presentation of Jesus is the only infancy narrative that overtly references the Passion. Simeon prophesies Mary’s intimate union with Christ’s redemptive suffering: This child is destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be contradicted (and you yourself a sword will pierce) so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed (Lk 2:34-35).
Giotto communicates the poignant drama of this moment through gesture and expression. Mary’s extended arms surrender Jesus to the aged priest, solemnly offering her precious Son to God. A helical column cuts through the composition, separating Mother and Child, while the babe totters nervously above the altar, reaching a hesitant arm backward. His outstretched limbs form the shape of a cross, echoed by his cruciform halo. The gravity of Mary’s gaze conveys her soul-rending acceptance, submission, and foreknowledge: this tiny body in Simeon’s arms will one day be draped on the arms of the cross.
The fresco’s placement further heightens this sense of foreboding. The chapel’s narrative cycle pairs each scene from Christ’s life and ministry with a complementary scene—located directly beneath it—from his Passion, Death, or Resurrection. This juxtaposition—carefully arranged by Giotto—invites the viewer to consider how each event “completes” or sheds light on the other.
The Presentation in the Temple is paired with The Kiss of Judas. In both scenes, Jesus is handed over and embraced. But the natural timidity of the child, fearful to leave his mother’s arms, is replaced by the steadfast courage of the grown man. Jesus stands firm. He allows the kiss of Judas and willingly embraces the impending sacrifice.
Yet the real drama is found in Jesus’ fixed gaze: that “still point of the turning world,” to borrow the poet T.S. Eliot’s words, around which the action of each scene revolves. Christ locks eyes with both Simeon and Judas. Their divergent reactions contrast the beauty of spiritual intimacy with the tragedy of spiritual death.
Simeon the God-receiver
Judas’ brutish features suggest an absence of wisdom. His darkened heart and intellect, blinded by sin and self-interest, fail to perceive the divine even as he stares into Jesus’ eyes. In this sinister embrace, the betrayer’s robe engulfs and covers Christ’s body. The onslaught of the sinful world encompasses Jesus—hemming him in from all sides—seeking to assert itself, to erase his existence.
Simeon, by contrast, bows in reverential recognition of the Godhead, cradling the child with veiled hands. He draws close to Jesus in a stance of adoration (from the Latin ad-oratio, “mouth to mouth”). The wise seer is face to face, eye to eye, mouth to mouth with God. “Righteous,” “devout,” and animated by the Spirit, he has aligned his words, his actions—his entire life—with the divine will.
Religious vows
For centuries, the Feast of the Presentation has commemorated the dedication of consecrated religious men and women to the service of God. In a nod to this ancient tradition, the fresco’s tripartite composition features meditations on the vows: poverty, chastity, and obedience.
To the left, Saint Joseph carries a pair of turtledoves: the purification offering prescribed by the Mosaic Law for families who could not afford a lamb. Our Lord, for your sake became poor although he was rich, so that by his poverty you might become rich (cf. 2 Cor 8:9).
To the right, the prophetess Anna testifies to the Messiah: Quoniam in isto erit redemptio saeculi (“In him will be the redemption of the human race”). Widowed at an early age, she never remarried, but remained in the temple, worshiping day and night with fasting and prayer. Anna has long been understood as a prototype of women religious. Forgoing the great good of family life after her husband’s death, she sought the Lord—her first love and supreme good—with ardent desire.
The fresco’s central scene highlights Jesus’ obedient submission to the dictates of the Mosaic Law. He did not need to undergo the redemption of the firstborn. Nonetheless, he humbled himself to this ritual with the same obedient, sacrificial love with which he would redeem the world.
Beholding God
As Christians, the body is the locus of our encounter with God—a temple of the Holy Spirit. In this temple, divinity and humanity embrace through prayer.
As we learn to fix our interior gaze on Christ, we can affirm with Saint Irenaeus: “The glory of God is man fully alive, and the life of man consists in beholding God.” Under his arresting gaze we are exposed to the infinite—to the subject of our yearning and its sole fulfillment. May Simeon, whose blessed eyes saw the Lord’s salvation, be an example to us as we seek the face of God.
Amy Giuliano
Holds degrees in theology from Rome & art history from Yale.
The Presentation of Jesus in the Temple (1304–1306), Giotto (c. 1266–1337), Cappella Scrovegni (Arena Chapel), Padua, Italy. © AKG-images / Cameraphoto.
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This exceptionally high-quality illuminated capital is the work of Sano di Pietro (c. 1405–1481), a famous Sienese painter who did not consider it beneath him to illumine manuscripts occasionally.
As if through the porthole of an orbiting space station, the artist reveals to us the earth’s globe, as it was in the center of heaven on the fourth day of the world’s creation.
In the foreground, behold God clothed in majesty, robed in light. To form the heavens, he spreads his robe in the firmament, like a cosmic canopy (see Ps 104:1-9). He has already fashioned Ursa Major (the Great Bear), Orion, the Pleiades, the southern constellations, and myriads of their sisters (see Job 9:7-9). He has already fixed the number of the stars and given each one its name (see Ps 147:4). At the moment depicted, he has just created the sun to light and heat the earth:
Praised be you, my Lord, with all your creatures;
especially Brother Sun,
who is the day, and through whom you give us light.
And he is beautiful and radiant with great splendor,
and bears a likeness to you, Most High One.
Praised be you, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars;
in heaven you formed them
clear and precious and beautiful.1
All things were made by him and in him
Guided by a very sure theological sense, the artist refuses to depict God the Creator, our Father, according to the convention of his era, as a venerable old man with a beard. Is he not the invisible God, whom no one has ever seen, whom no one can claim to see without having died? That doesn’t matter; didn’t Jesus say: He who has seen me has seen the Father (Jn 14:9)? So the artist does not hesitate; he depicts Jesus Christ, inasmuch as he is the perfect image of his Father: His halo is marked with the cross, his face has the admirable features of the age at which he died, 33 years old, and the lining of his cloak, an earthen yellow, testifies to his incarnation. The choice of this way of depicting the Creator is perfectly consistent with the Genesis account in which God said and it was done: Jesus is the Logos, the Word of God who created the world.
A famous passage from Saint Paul’s Letter to the Colossians enlightens the artist’s brilliant decision to depict the Almighty Father in his dearly beloved Son:
He is the image of the invisible God,
the first-born of all creation;
for in him all things were created,
in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible,
whether thrones or dominions or principalities
or authorities—
all things were created through him and for him. (Col 1:15-16)
And here the question posed by Psalm 8 takes on an eternal dimension:
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
The moon and the stars which you have established;
What is man that you are mindful of him,
And the son of man that you care for him?
Yet you have made him little less than the angels,
And you have crowned him with glory and honor.
You have given him dominion over the works
of your hands;
You have put all things under his feet. (Ps 8:4-7)
The artist leaves to our meditation the fact that when he depicts God the Creator, he depicts him as one of us, a true man who really was born of a woman, who really lived among us and who really died. And with good reason.
1-- Saint Francis of Assisi, Canticle of the Sun.
God creating the stars (Historiated initial O), Sano di Pietro (1406–1481), Marmottan Monet Museum, Paris, France. © Bridgeman Images.
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