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Sunday
Homilies
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About The Image Above...
Since Jean Colombe had already represented
Pentecost in the Très Riches Heures (folio 79r), he illustrated Tuesday,
the day of the Holy Ghost, with a picture of the apostles, inspired by
the Holy Ghost, going forth to preach the Gospel.
The subject is not new; earlier artists
had shown the apostles shod and setting out for their journeys to different
parts of the world. The innovation here is their leave-taking of the Virgin
Mary, who traditionally accompanied them spiritually.
This scene probably reflects the influence
of the staging of contemporaneous religious theater, such as the Conversion
of St. Paul in which the apostles take advantage of their farewell to Mary
to ask her for advice:
Mais allons ainçois, je vous prie,
Savoir de la Vierge Marie,
S'ell nouse voudra rien commander.
Approaching Mary here are a curly-bearded
Peter and Matthew. The heavy physiognomy of the first is typical of many
of Jean Colombe's figures, while the expression of the second is softened
by a flowing white heard and a thinner face. Touched by their behavior,
the Virgin greets them with a gesture of both hands; behind her stand the
rapt Holy Women, also mentioned in Acts.
The other apostles have already started
out, not in the traditional groups of three but in pairs, so that we actually
see only eight apostles, not twelve. John is recognizable because he is
beardless, but the others do not have any distinctive characteristics.
Three groups leave in the different directions
marked by the fork in the road. Traditionally, some, like John and Philip,
went to Asia Minor and Galatia; others, as in the case of Jude and Simon,
went to Mesopotamia and Egypt; while still others, like Andrew and James
the Greater, went to Greece or distant Spain.
Here, their routes are scattered with châteaux,
lakes, and mountains. The Golden Legend states that the apostles were miraculously
reunited at the Virgin's bedside at the time of her death.
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