Electric Prayer

The National Gallery has an exhibition Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300 ‒1350, which runs until 22 June. Following established practice, the exhibition website is likely to be destroyed at that time so that nobody can read anything about it. The exhibition catalogue will survive: it is edited by Joanna Cannon and its ISBN is 978-1857097160.

“After centuries of separation, we reunite scenes that once formed part of Duccio’s monumental ‘Maestà’ altarpiece,” says the description.

Eight paintings from the back predella of the altarpiece are shown in the exhibition. The scholarly consensus is that there were originally nine.

Both the exhibition labels themselves and the exhibition catalogue express some puzzlement that the Transfiguration should be the subject of one of the paintings, because the feast of the Transfiguration arrived in the Latin church relatively late, and paintings on that subject are rare.

The answer to the puzzle may be this: that this painting has nothing to do with the feast of the Transfiguration.

Here are the eight exhibited subjects, in order:

The Temptations of Christ: 2, the Temple

The Temptations of Christ: 3, the Kingdoms of the World

The Calling of the Apostles Peter and Andrew

The Wedding at Cana

The Samaritan Woman at the Well

The Healing of the Man Born Blind

The Transfiguration

The Raising of Lazarus

Here are the subjects of the Gospel for the first five Sundays of Lent:

1	The Temptations of Christ
2	The Transfiguration
3	The Samaritan Woman at the Well
4	The Healing of the Man Born Blind
5	The Raising of Lazarus

This correspondence is impressive. It shows that there is a chance that the presence of the Transfiguration in the predella is not surprising at all but liturgically obvious: indeed, necessary.

Back to Trent

The readings I have given are from the revised lectionary of 1970. The lectionary of 1308 will have been different.

Here is the Tridentine lectionary, which came into use in 1570:

1st Sunday	The Temptations of Christ
2nd Sunday	The Transfiguration
3rd Friday	The Samaritan Woman at the Well
4th Wednesday	The Healing of the Man Born Blind
4th Friday	The Raising of Lazarus

The slight compression comes because in the Tridentine calendar the final two weeks of Lent (the 5th and 6th) are special, whereas in the revised calendar only the 6th week is.

Liturgical historians?

There remains the gap between 1308 and 1570. What is needed now is for someone versed in liturgical history to look into pre-Tridentine manuscripts to see if the same themes were used during Lent.

This is certainly worth investigating. It is likely (though it needs verification) that although a separate feast of the Transfiguration arrived in the Latin Church quite late, the Transfiguration as part of Lenten run-up to the Redemption was established much earlier. That in turn would resolve the puzzle of why it occurs in the altarpiece.