When Roland and I were in Florence, Italy, in 2018, we spent a
substantial part of a day at the Galleria degli Uffizi. I took lots of photos
of paintings, including a couple I will feature in later blog posts, but the
gallery was simply too large to see everything. I must have missed “Mary and
Joseph on the Way to Bethlehem,” a 1475 painting by Hugo van der Goes that is apparently
among the collection as part of the Portinari Altarpiece, which I also don’t
remember seeing. That means I got this photo from the internet.
When Caesar Augustus took a census, he didn’t send people out to every
little village. Instead, he ordered his citizens to go to the town of their
ancestors to be counted there. In Joseph’s case, that was Bethlehem, the city
of David.
The road to Bethlehem is mountainous and rocky, even today. The picture
shows Joseph carefully guiding his very pregnant wife over the treacherous path
on their way to be counted for the census. Here is the passage from Luke 2:1-5.
1In those days a decree went out from Caesar
Augustus that all the word should be registered. 2This was the first
registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria. 3And all went to
be registered, each to his own town. 4And Joseph also went up from
Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is
called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, 5to
be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child.
Next week I’ll look at a painting by El Greco based on some of the
best-known verses from the nativity.
__________
The van der Goes painting is in the public domain because of its age.
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