This is Johann
Heinrich Glaser’s anamorphic composition, ‘The Fall’, 1638, dedicated to the
Rector of Basle University, a man called Remi Fasch.
I sourced
the image in Jurgis Baltrušaitis’ Anamorphic Art (1977), following up a
reference in Stuart Clark’s 2007 book, Vanities of the Eye. I post this
because I tried to find the image somewhere on the web, but failed apart from a
couple of impossibly small-sized reproductions in Google books. (I haven’t been
able to source a copy of Fred Leeman’s Hidden Images book of 1976, which
may have a better version.)
So, this is
two scans merged together of one A3 sized photocopy of a double page
reproduction in a book. I then fastened my long strip to a piece of plywood
with blu-tack, and tried taking oblique photographs from the principal point of
view you must use if the anamorphic face of Christ crowned with thorns is to
appear.
Well, much
has been lost in this series of reproductions. I did my best; it conveys the
idea. There’s no angle that gives a better view of the image of Christ, without
those alarmingly dissimilar sized eyes that is. Baltrušaitis does not give the
original dimensions of the 1638 print. Judging by the size of the letters in
the dedicatory inscription that runs along the bottom, I’d guess at twice the
size of the reproduction, which is 40cm across in the book. The real thing must
work far better than the reproduced version. Clarity in this case is
everything, if the eye is to be deceived.
So, within these
limitations, I think we can see, reading across from the right, Adam and Eve at
the forbidden tree, with a large and properly serpentine (rather than
Lamia-like) serpent coiled round the tree trunk, while an owl sits on a branch,
and a peacock stands at their feet. Between them, Death rises up as they
disobey God.
The
animals: an ape gazes at the lake, but it is viewing the ‘vexierbild’,
the puzzle-picture from the wrong side: the ape will not see Christ (as if the
picture demonstrates that it lacks a soul). On this side of the lake, and
nearest the act of transgression, foxes, a bear, a cow, rabbit, a cat and a dog
sparring. Behind these animals, a half-hidden row of birds: what might be a
toucan (known from the mid 16th century), two ibises, a cockerel
with two rather exotic hens, a bird with a crest, a pheasant, a turkey, and a
sprawling alligator. Then at the far left, the angel or cherubim chases Adam
and Eve out of Paradise, the serpent wriggles at their feet, ready to start
receiving its curse, and Death encourages their flight from Eden into
his realm.
The
lobe-like shores of the lake are of course where the anamorphic, hidden Christ
begins. As a lake in Eden, He enlarges the usual four source streams of
Paradise, usually depicted as clear rivulets stemming from a fountain, and usually
allegorised as God’s grace flowing out to the whole world (the Pison, Gihon, Hiddekel
and Euphrates, as Scafi’s book on Medieval maps explains, being taken to water
all countries). Man’s sin has the reservoir of grace ready, the redeemer will
not be revealed for millennia, but His mission, for which He is ready, has
started.
Glaser has found a new way to put the two Adams into one
picture (“First, wee see the difference between the two Adams:
the first made sin, and infected all the world with it: The other made no sin,
but redeemed all the world from it”, wrote Nicholas Byfield in 1623, it was a
favourite thought of Donne’s – and of course many others).
There must be a larger study of unrevealed or half-revealed Christs.
That Christ’s divine nature was hidden during His incarnation is one regular
idea. But Christ is repeatedly not seen, or unrecognized. My title for this
post comes from Luke 24, verse 16, non-recognition on the road to Emmaus; Mary
Magdalene does not know him at John 20 14-16. At the start of His mission, in
Like 4, 28-30, in one verse, Jesus is about to be cast down from the top of the
hill by those angered by His calm self-announcement (after He has read from
Isaiah in the synagogue, ‘This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears’),
and His apparent refusal to show His ministry in Nazareth: the next verse, He
has somehow slipped away through the angry mob: Jesus autem transiens
in medio illorum, the line medieval travellers liked to have on their good
luck charms.
There ought, really, to be more early modern pictures like
this. The Reformation’s iconoclasm made depictions of the godhead
controversial. This was a perfect way to compromise (you’d have thought):
Puritans, all you see is a landscape, Anglicans, squint in from the left frame.
But I guess they were so much one or the other, compromise never appealed that
much.
‘And their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he
vanished out of their sight.’ (Luke 24, 31)
