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This is a fantastic collection of images! Speaking mainly of the paintings, I continue to be struck by the wide range of depictions that contain only the artists’ limited frame of reference to his own time, and the few that strive for historical accuracy, since the visual history was so much harder to access or be known in the earlier days of Christendom. Whether due to youth or homosexuality, many of these artists had no clue about the bodily proportions of an infant; and #41 shows a three-year old Jesus walking between his parents! (by the way, that painter is Giovanni Francesco Romanelli).

Here is my list of puzzling or amusing anachronisms in many of the paintings:

1) The clothing, made of luxurious fabrics, with textures, sheen, patterning, brocading or volume, as opposed to the vegetable-dyed homespun linen, hemp or woolen more likely to have been available to a rural couple…
2) The styles of many of the articles of clothing, such as the men’s hats, hosiery or pointed felt slippers or the women’s wimples of the Middle Ages, or the corseting and bodices of the Renaissance…
3) Time-traveling accoutrements, such as the brand-new-to-the-16th-century violin and sheet music in the otherwise beautifully composed and illuminated Caravaggio #65, or the basketry fishing creel and nearby European medieval villages with gothic windows in the Patinir #42, or the wooden cradle being carried in #50 by Joseph with the baby in it—on a donkey. Some car safety seat!
4) Mary as a mature woman, when she would normally in Jewish culture have been married off not long after puberty; since she was a virgin, she was probably between 12 and 16…
5) Joseph as an old man; this would mean either he never married young as was the Jewish custom, didn’t cat around because that behavior was not likely to have been accepted in a rural community under Judaism, or somehow would have remained celebate until he was bald or white haired as in so many of these depictions. To me, it seems unlikely that God would have chosen him for the caregiver of a young bride and, until adulthood, His very own Son. God specified the cleanest, purest and most spotless lambs and calves for His sacrifices in the tabernacle and Temple—why would His choice of a husband for Mary be an old dude who had weathered the injuries of farm life and the illnesses that inevitably come the longer you live? Seems unlikely he was older than 16 to 24 himself.

I love that so many included an angel to escort the couple or lead the donkey. And I’m very fond of the styized, icon-like qualities of the da Fabriano #52 and the Fra Angelico #53. Got a chuckle from the bird poop adorning Gaudí’s Sagrada sculpture #59.

The most authentic costuming and age depiction would seem to be the illustration #66 attributed to Munir Alawi, who is selling “wall art”—how did a muslim name get in there? Perhaps he saw the Light! Hallelujah! Or maybe he just recognizes a market. Given that there are so many and varied techniques and images with his name at that link, Alawi would appear to be the aggregator of images that he will then print up digitally when you submit payment, including on phone cases, beach towels and coffee mugs; but not the original artist. I could be wrong.

Thank you for the heads up to the Luc Olivier Merson #67. Merson reduced the size of the Sphinx (which would have been over 1,000 years old during the Holy Family’s flight), yet using it as a symbol for a resting place in the Egyptian desert seems strangely believable. The scene is stunning in the way that classical symphonic orchestral music scored for a 20th- or 21st-century epic film like Star Wars is stunning—a May-December marriage of two outstanding eras of cultural expression.

Thanks, Hebrews 11:6, for all your hours curating and assembling these images that bring the scriptures to life in so many imaginative ways.