trans intelligence # 2, 1999                                                                                                                         
 WERE THERE TWO ?

THE TWO JESUS CHILDREN
                                                                                                 by Paulina Leonard (USA)

In 1909, while lecturing in Switzerland on the Gospel of Saint Luke, Dr. Rudolf Steiner spoke for the first time of  a deep cosmic mystery of there having been not one, but two Jesus children born in Bethlehem.

The purpose of this article is to direct the reader to a number of paintings that have come down to us through the passage of art History, and to briefly discuss these images in the light of this startling revelation by Rudolf Steiner - 20th century Austrian seer, scientist, and philosopher.

Perhaps nothing said by Dr Rudolf Steiner in his Christologies have been more startling or more challenging to comprehend. There are those who have been so unsettled by this revelation that they have rejected  all else said by Steiner, while others believe this topic to be so problematic that it should not be discussed.

As the work and thought of Dr Rudolph Steiner increasingly makes its way into the mainstream, some degree of attention to this controversial issue becomes justified because nothing sheds more light, nor brings so much clarity to the confused state of diverse affairs of  the Nativity story as does this Steiner revelation. In the  Matthew and Luke Nativity stories one is confronted with different births, different locations for the births, and two separate genealogies.  Theologians over the centuries have struggled with the inconsistencies inherent in the Nativity stories of the two gospels . Unfortunately, theological debating in regard to this issue has arisen from a foundation of  ecclesiastical consensus rather than spiritual reality.  Over the centuries this issue has fallen into the domain of intellectual and logical considerations framed from a materialistic, rather than a spiritual world view. Yet, anyone who has ever undertaken the research task of constructing an accurate family tree  will readily understand the problem arising from the discrepancies in the Nativity stories of the Matthew and Luke gospels.  Although both gospels show the descent of Jesus from the House of David there are significant differences as shown in the table below.

When considering the surprising revelation of a cosmic necessity for there needing to be two Jesus children, it is helpful to keep in mind what Rudolf Steiner revealed to a group of close friends called together for a special meeting in January of 1909. At this meeting Steiner unveiled that it has only become possible to reveal this information as a result of the impending appearance of the etheric Christ that was on the horizon and with this even illumination of this particuliar secret of history was now became possible. Additionally, it is important to consider a another related matter infrequenlty discussed.  Thirty-eight years after Steiner's first spoke of there having been two Jesus children a surprising discovery  was made in the birth place of Jesus .  In the spring of 1947 the area around Kirbet Qumran began surrendered its earthly and anciently held secrets - the Dead Sea Scrolls.  Among eleven caves discovered that year in the northwest landscape of that region portions of a scroll were found that would later come to be known as the Damascus Document. This document speaks of a central dogma among the Essene community of the prophesy of two Messiahs - one, a Messiah of Aaron; and one, a Messiah of Israel; a priestly Messiah and a  kingly Messiah, both coming out of the House of David  to rule side by side.  This scroll fragment sheds light on such enigmatic passages from the book of Zohar and the Old Testament as:

        "The Messiah, which is the Son of Joseph will be made one with the Son of David, but he will
          be killed..."

       "Another Messiah, the son of Joseph, will unite himself with the Messiah, the son of David.  but
        the son of Joseph will not remain in life, he will be killed and will become alive again, when the
        little hill receives life upon the great hill."

       "There shall come a star out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel."

In 1923 Rudolph Steiner spoke of a painting in Turin which he said visually depicts the reality of this event historically:

    “There we find that this historical fact is represented of Jesus in the temple where he taught
    the  scribes, and, there, curiously enough, is this second Jesus boy. Hence, there are two Jesus
    boys pictured there, so that one can say in certain centuries people still knew that a second
    Jesus boy has existed”.

The painting of which he spoke, Christ Among The Doctors, is by Giovanni Martino Spanzotti (Fig.1) .  In this painting we see the young Jesus in discourse with the temple doctors.  At the left side of Jesus, looking at the young teacher in rapt attention, is a second child with duplicate features and hair and to the left of this second child we see the figures of Joseph and Mary.

There has been no small amount of debate among historians in regard to the attribution of this painting, going first Spanzotti, and then to Defendente Ferrari, an artist-in-training under Spazotti.  Confusion in this matter was twofold. As Spanzotti’s  busy workshop gained increasing fame and the Christ Among The Doctors theme became increasingly popular many of the commissions coming to this workshop became a collaborative effort and led to the Turin painting being duplicated several times (Fig.2) with a copy by Giovanni Battista Giovenone in (Fig.3) providing a terminu ante quem in 1532.

Prior to the Ferrari and Spanzotti attributions, an altarpiece of this same popular subject matter had been painted in 1509 for the Milano Romanesque Basilica of St. Ambroglio.  This fresco (Fig 4) was painted by the Milanese artist Ambrogio da Fossano Bergognone, otherwise known as Borgognone II, or just simply Borgognone - "one of the thinner painters who operate in Lombardy between the second half of the 1400's and the beginnings of the 1500's". 

Although it is believe that this painting influenced the Turin Spanzotti Christ among the Doctors, there can be found a tradition of two Jesus children in works of art from much earlier periods elsewhere. (Fig. 5)

The St. Ambroglio altarpiece is not a well known work of art, and even in Milan it is not featured as one of the more coveted art treasures to be found at this magnificence Romanesque basilica. One is hard pressed to locate a copy of this painting  in art publications of the Renaissance period and very little information is to be found on the life of the artist. In time to come, however, this composition will surely gain greater appreciation. This rendition of the familiar and often repeated scene from the life of Christ deserves a closer look from an esoteric perspective.

In the compositional space of  the St. Ambroglio altarpiece we find the  young Jesus seated in the rabbinical chair teaching the temple scholars .  The curves of Romanesque arches overhead accentuate the centrality of this figure. (Fig. 6) The attention of the young Jesus himself, however, is not directed to the scholars with whom he is in discourse. His gaze is focused on another figure in front of him and to his right.  This figure, which is positioned in the lower left quadrant of the composition,  is a second child identical to the central figure, with the exception of being only perceptibly smaller in stature, of a paler complexion,  and conveys a more fragile posturing. The second Jesus is in a jesture of departure from the composition, moving towards the figure immediately behind him who is easily identified by both her maternal jesture of outstretched arms and by her halo as being that of Mary.  Behind Mary there is an elderly male figure, who can be identified by halo as being that of Joseph.

An interesting and subtle technique has been employed by the artist to establish a unification of these two figures by the use of the white cloak Bergognone used to enrobed the figure of Mary.  This cloak, which encompasses Mary's head and shoulders passes in front of her in a strong, but simple rectangular form with little effort to convey the sense of draping demonstrated in the garments of the central figure of Jesus and the clothing of the temple scholars.  The cloak reappears again behind Mary’s halo in the hand of  Joseph establishing a subtle emphasis between the two figures. It is as though the hem of this cloak has been grasped by Joseph and he raised it to his cheek in a sorrowful  jesture of wiping away a tear.  (Fig.6) 

 Looking  at this compositional arrangement, and the visual articulation of Mary’s cloak, one cannot help but be reminded of the lengths of cloth used for burial, especially that of Jesus.  (Is it possible that Bergognone intentionally enrobed the Mary figure with more of a shroud than a cloak?) 

Most art historians today would say of this altarpiece that duplication of the major pictorial figure within one compositional frame is not significant, and that Bergognone was merely articulating a visual representation of the startling inner transformation experienced in the boy Jesus at age twelve as told in the New Testament.  Such a technique of duplicate representation is called duel-scene painting.  Bergognone used this same technique again in his painting of the young Saint Benedict in Nantes, at the Musée des Beaux Arts, and one can see how this artist effectively employed this technique in a triplicate figure interpretation.  Here Bergognone depicts the young Saint Benedict in prayer, at the miracle of  the broken shards, and departing for Subiaco, all in one compositional frame. (Fig.7 ) 

 One can find this technique employed by artists throughout history.  Across Europe one will find paintings and sculptures of duel-scene paintings on many subjects. One can also find many additional works of art depicting the two Jesus children from the earliest centuries of Christianity.  The question becomes one of if it is possible that some of the two Jesus children works of art convey more than just an artistic predilection for a certain technical use of limited compositional space? Is it possible that these duel-scene paintings represent a conscious interpretation of two children, a Matthew Jesus and a Luke Jesus?  Did Bergognone in his St. Ambroglio altarpiece intentionally depict a visual revelation of what would later come to light in 1909 through the spoken words of Rudolph Steiner?

It cannot be known. 

What is for us is a picture-puzzle, was for men of past centuries a perfectly clear allegory. The Middle Ages spoke to mankind through the great picture-books of mural paintings and statuary and the subjects of these were actually understood and not just 'appreciated'  Numerous difficulties are involved with an accurate biography of  any painting unless the artist provides some kind of documentation.  With  works of art dating back many centuries the difficulty is compounded. Written records have been either lost or else never existed. As art became a commodity many works of art experienced a loss of integrity. Altarpieces have been divided, paintings cropped, and even intentionally altered through processes of restoration. 

Yet, there is no question that some esoteric knowledge was known among certain artists.  The great German artist, Albrecht Durer traveling in Italy went to Venice in order to learn of certain matters having to do with proportioning. We know through the private letters of Durer to his close friend Willibald Pirkheimer in 1505 that he was to meet with 'someone' who was to reveal to him certain esoteric secrets and formulas.  Durer, of course, has connected with Giovanni Bellini and artists aligned with the school of Venice, rather than the Piedmontese influence and it is from the Lombardy and Piedmontese influence that the two Jesus children paintings shown here originated. However, it is possible to make a loose connection between Lombardy and Milan by way of the influence that Jacopo Bellini had on Vincenzio Foppa, who in turn influenced Bergognone.

However, we cannot know with certainty of such things which are in themselves esoteric knowledge  and therefore were intended to remain hidden rather than broadcast about.  What can be known with certainty is that an understanding of art is circumscribed by a certain time factor, because the subject matter of culture changes with time.  The art of any period must be seen from a historical perspective, and the culture from which it evolved. One of the difficulties of interpreting and evaluating the works of  a different culture is that the historian stands outside of the time and place of the individual who created these works. Today's informed aesthetic judgments about such art work which fill our libraries is written using a vocabulary formulated quite outside of the culture of the originating work. In any period the art of a certain society defines the 'who we are’ of both the individual and the society. For example, one can neither understand nor appreciate, much less value African Art without first coming to understand what stands behind the defining 'timeless moment' of the ritual for which the artifact was created. So, too, one cannot assess the religious art of duel-scene Renaissance paintings or compositions without a comprehension of what stood behind the creation and was at work in the mind and heart of the artisan. 

Renaissance men and women were not secular humanists.  The influences of Newton, and Darwin, and modern physics did not yet exist.  This was a time of wonder, and terror.  This was a time of the great plague and of great signs in the heavens; meteors fell from the skies, and comets painted their shining trails across the firmament.  On Easter Sunday in 1501 a strange phenomena, the  Miracle of the Crosses, originated in a village near Maastricht, spread to Liege and Utrecht, down the Nehe valley and up the Rhine, to the south to Tyrol, to Poland in the East and to Denmark in the North.  Light, falling from the sky left traces in the form of crosses on the clothing of men, women and children.  Durer described the occurrence of this phenomena in Nuremberg in 1503.

In researching the origins of the duel-scene Jesus paintings another possible consideration, especially in regard to the Bergognone fresco, is the ancient history of the Basilica of St. Ambroglio, first began in 379 AD in the Lombardy region of Italy.  Milan, according to the Roman historian Livy, was a Celtic village founded in the 6th century BC.  Mediolanum, the Roman name for Milan, was conquered by Roman legions in 222 BC following an attempt to ally itself with Carthage, becoming a part of the state of Rome in the 1st century BC.  Those familiar with the work of Rudolf Steiner are acquainted with the profound mystery wisdom knowledge he attributed to the Celts. During the time period the paintings under discussion were executed old devotional traditions were still strong among the peasants in the mountain shrine areas of Lombardy and the origin of such traditions were not unknown to the artists working in  the Piedmonte region.

Many spiritual truths known at the time of early Christianity have been lost to mankind, but spiritual truths have a way of surviving or resurfacing even when completely eliminated. The biblical knowledge of the modern man-compared with that of his forefathers is already so slight that only the best-known biblical subjects can be generally understood without the aid of inscriptions or explanatory texts.  And how much more rapidly has the allegorical subject-matter of the Renaissance sunk into oblivion! Looking at the St. Ambroglio altarpiece from a perspective of the revelation of Rudolph Steiner, and in the light of the Essenic dogma  may we not allow ourselves to believe that visual traces of earlier known esoteric teachings have found their way intentionally, or by way of inspiration  into the passage of art and time? Here is not only a well favored artistic theme, but, also, a visual representation of the historical point in time when, as predicted in the Old Testament the two Messiahs became one. The ego of the Matthew Jesus has departed to merge with  the Luke Jesus represented by the central figure. We see before us the Matthew child, paler now, less robust, moving toward the concerned embrace of his mother who is enrobed in cloth all too reminiscent of a shroud.  Without ego this Jesus child will shortly fall ill and die. The great sacrifice of this Matthew child, the merging of his ego with the Luke child, is the moment of fulfillment of the  prophesy of "when  two shall become one and that which is outward is inward".  This is what speaks to us from the composition of the St. Ambroglio altarpiece.

 As we approach the new millennium much of humanity finds itself  in a time  of an unprecedented theological paradigm.  Somewhere along the way, between  Newtonian  physics and the nuclear bomb,  between Nietsche and Altizer, we have descended into such a materialistic mindset that God has become a problem for the ‘thinking' person.  Many find themselves more attuned to a world view of atheistic or agnostic consideration  than  a certainty of belief in the divine. Writing from this plateau of  doubt and questioning synthesis British writer, religious historian, Karen Armstrong says that we are in one of those periods of history when we are simply waiting in the darkness for some future image to arise. 

When this future image does arise will humanity discover to its surprise that it stands once again before the same sacred images of past centuries gazing back from the walls of museums around the world where they wait patiently for us to discover anew their spiritually-inspired compositional secrets - there all along, but like T.S. Eliot's children in the apple-tree  "not known, because not looked for"? Go. Look, again.  

References
1.Steiner, Rudolf, 1909, The Gospel of St. Luke
2.Bock,Emil, 1949The Christmas Festival in the Lifework of Rudolf Steiner
3.Hiebel, Friedrich, Treasures of Biblical Research and the Conscience
of the Times, 1968 Journal of Anthroposophy
4.Bock, Emil,1997,The Childhood of Jesus, Floris Books
5.Ibid
6.Ibid
7.Steiner Rudolf, 1923, The Nature of Christianity, The Two Jesus Boys, GA 394.3
8.Grove Dictionary of Art, 1996, McMillian Pub. Ltd., Vol. 11
9.Ibid
11.Heath, Richard Ford, 1934, The Great Artists, Durer, Sampson Low, Marston & Co., Ltd.
12.Waetzoldt, Wilhelm, MCML, Durer, Phaidon
13.Oxford Companion of Art, 429-30
14.Bock, Emil,1997,The Childhood of Jesus,Floris Books

END