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King René of Anjou, a fifteenth century nobleman, commissioned the French Renaissance painter, Nicholas Froment, to complete an image of the Virgin Mary for the Carmelite Church at Aix-en-Provence in southern France. The king requested that the triptych include two side panels depicting himself and his wife Jeanne de Laval, which would accompany the center panel of the Virgin. The center panel is a complex narrative that features Mary as the subject. It provides us with a rich set of visual experiences that help us to know not only who Mary is—as a literal person—but also how deeply the medieval theologians cultured encouragement toward devotion to Mary. Nicholas was commissioned to select the relationship of Mary to the Burning Bush encountered by Moses on Mount Horeb, the mountain of God in chapter three of the book of Exodus.

As Moses tended the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, he noticed something unexplainable on the mountain:

There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up” (Exodus 3:2-3).

From this supernaturally unconsumed vegetation, God spoke to Moses and gave him the commission to be his messenger to the Egyptians and become the leader of the Israelites. But why is Mary in the Burning Bush?

The Importance of Typology

In the developing understanding of God’s plan of salvation, the early Church Fathers used typology as a way to explain the eternal continuity of God’s design of placing people and events in history for a purpose and a meaning. The idea of typology is often colloquially expressed in the aphorism occasionally attributed to Mark Twain: “History doesn’t repeat itself; but it rhymes.”

Typology allows us to see persons and events as either foreshadows or echoes of other persons and events. Scripture gives us numerous examples: Abraham willing to sacrifice Isaac, his only beloved son, is like God the Father and his beloved Son Jesus; and Jonah spending three days “buried” in the belly of the whale then returned to “life” on dry land is like Jesus buried in the tomb only to rise again at the Resurrection; and so on.

The history of art also gives examples. Here in this image of Mary, present at the encounter of Moses, is an angel and God on Mount Horeb. The artist is relying on typology to make a connection between the bush, supernaturally preserved from losing its identity as a living piece of nature and Mary as the Virgin, preserved in her virginity while still being Mary, Theotokos—the bearer of God.

This example, while rare, is not unique. The depiction of Mary and the Burning Bush also appears in medieval manuscript illuminations and in icons from antiquity to today. Perhaps the earliest reference comes from Gregory of Nyssa, who wrote his Life of Moses (fourth century), where he poetically describes the foundational Christian importance of the Incarnation. Referring to the human encounter with God he writes:

…truth will shine, illuminating the eyes of the soul with its own rays. This truth, which was then manifested by the ineffable and mysterious illumination which came to Moses, is God. (Life of Moses, no. 19)

Gregory continues to explain the narrative of God who became Man:

For if truth is God and truth is light – the Gospel testifies, by these sublime and divine names, to the God who made himself visible to us in the flesh – such guidance of virtue leads us to know that light which has reached down even to human nature. Lest one think that the radiance did not come from a material substance, this light did not shine from some luminary among the stars but came from an earthly bush and surpassed the heavenly luminaries in brilliance. (no. 20)

Gregory is testifying that God does not simply “shine at a distance” like a star or a faceless, nameless energy source; God came to us in our material existence. Then Gregory completes the thought and turns our contemplation to Mary:

From this we learn also the mystery of the Virgin. The light of divinity which through birth shone from her into human life did not consume the burning bush, even as the flower of her virginity was not withered by giving birth. (no. 21)

Artistic Typology

Froment paints the two narratives together: the Annunciation and Moses on Mount Horeb. The angel of the Lord stands to the left, with a calming gesture in greeting Moses. This same type of encounter is described in the narrative of the Annunciation. The angel’s garment here reminds us of the Archangel Gabriel in the artwork of the Northern Renaissance artists Jan Van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, and others. In this image, one can see a direct influence from those earlier Northern artists and their intense articulation of every part of a painted scene. However, within Northern “Gothic Realism” there were many disruptions of naturalism. While the images are carefully painted, “perfect” in every detail, the visual compositions often challenge the imagination to see and know the subject as a supernatural experience. This image of Mary leads us on a visual journey with a twist.

Froment uses the idea of joining together two subjects—a grace-filled woman and an ancient story of burning vegetation—to create a spatial composition that does just that. As viewers of the scene, we find ourselves at the feet of Moses in the foreground as he unfastens his shoe. If we were to pass by him, wander through his flock, continue along the path, pass some more of his flock, make a hairpin turn, continue on until we reached the base of an enormous hill, we would have traveled a great distance, perhaps hundreds of yards. As our eyes climb that craggy hillside, we see that the distant vegetation begins to look more like a grove of trees. If we were to see ourselves there, so far away from where we started, we would be but a tiny figure in the distance. Then suddenly in the foliage of those trees we see Mary, holding the Child Jesus, but she is the same size as Moses and the angel. Isn’t this impossible? How can she be so far away and at the same time be so close? This is a paradox—something that, at first encounter, must be “untrue” yet we are seeing it to be true—an apparent contradiction and an impossibility. We have traveled so far and yet we are back where we started; that which is distant is right in front of us. If we fit this visual expression into an understanding of the subject—Mary’s identity and her role in the bearing of Christ—we see it is typologically synonymous with the appearance of God’s immutable Light and Voice in the Burning Bush. Whether speaking to Moses from the Bush or incarnating in the womb of Mary, when God reaches out to humankind, it breaks the membrane surrounding our material reality. It is a cosmic paradox, a surprise and an event of startling beauty.

There are other “typological” considerations in this image. Placing Mary atop a grove of trees also references the Jesse Tree, with Mary as the human bloom preceding the Divine Bloom of Christ. The angel wears a medallion with an image of Adam and Eve while Jesus holds a matching-sized “mirror,” reflecting both him and his mother, the New Adam and New Eve. By visual means, mirrors are a way to break apart and reassemble time and space. However, the meaning of this mirror may contain additional particular significance with regard to the Renaissance. As Renaissance Christian humanism progressed, Christian artists sought to rehabilitate the pagan world of antiquity, seeing the Christian age as a fulfillment of what had been yearned for in the ancient world. An example is the recurrence of the ancient pagan sibyls—prophetesses who may have predicted the coming of Christ—as seen in Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling and Van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece. In the work of Sandro Botticelli and others, Venus, the goddess of beauty, returned to the stage, remembered as the embodiment of the perfect woman. These artists transferred the idea of perfection to Mary, honoring Mary with image after image throughout the Renaissance. However, Venus was often depicted holding a mirror, suggesting an attribute of vanity or self-admiration. In Froment’s painting, we see that Jesus, not Mary, holds the mirror and both of them are in the reflection. In Northern Renaissance paintings, mirrors were often painted into wedding portraits as a reminder to continuously “reflect” on the spousal relationship. Here perhaps we see Jesus asking us to reflect on his relationship to Mary and, by the extension of the mirror, her relationship to us as well. She is full of grace and chosen to be the perfected vessel that grew the body of God. She also remains our mother, our teacher, our model and perpetual intercessor in heaven.

Linus Meldrum is Assistant Professor of Fine Arts at Franciscan University of Steubenville, OH where he teaches the core course, Visual Arts and the Catholic Imagination as well as Studio Art.

This article originally appeared on pages 21-24 of the printed edition.

(More can be learned about this important Renaissance painting in an article by E. Harris in the Journal of the Warburg Institute, Vol 1, No 4 (April 1938) pp. 281-286 available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/749992.)