Matthew 2 describes how, after the magi had visited the newborn Jesus, Joseph was warned in a dream by an angel to take Mary and her Child far away. This 1645 painting by Rembrandt imagines the angel coming gently but insistently with a message of what Joseph must do to save the life of the Babe.
Thank you for posting this concise description behind the meaning/story of this deeply gorgeous Rembrandt. I find it curious how the dream is depicted as an angel. Could it be possible that in our pre-biblical and ancient mind, the realm of dream was so characterized as a personified angelic being that descends from the heavens to provide insight and forewarning to the dreamer as opposed to our current notion of "dream" as an emergent from beneath us in the SUBconscious depths of our personally forgotten or repressed characteristics?
ReplyDeleteI will soon be posting this public domain image to support a blog post on Caedmon, the original voice in all of the English verse known! Any forays into a connection between Caedmon and your rather "angelic" imagistic space?
I am intrigued by the connection between dream and the "angel," where in my mind, there may be little separation between the two.
ReplyDeleteIn art, dream itself could be depicted as an angel and vice versa. This notion carries with it the action of the dream as descending from the heavens of our common ethereal realms to which we all derive our highest beatific visions in our conscious, waking dream states. This view stands as opposite to the normally understood idea of dream as emerging as if from beneath in our most personal, SUBconscious depths of our own isolated experience.
I was drawn to this image flipping through images of Rembrandt paintings, and lo and behold the great Joseph, interpreter of Pharaonic dreams, is at the behest of a newfound vision of what the phenomenal expression of the "dream" is out of the untouched, non-human aether of all experience.
Thanks you for relaying the story of this image!