Though there is copious recent scholarship on Josephus’ historiography, art historian Steven Wander focuses in his new volume upon Josephus’ “influence on artworks from Roman Antiquity and the early Middle Ages” (p. 19), ranging from the Arch of Titus to the Paris Psalter.[1] This is, indeed, very welcome, since it is the first book-length study of this important topic and is supported by beautiful illustrations throughout.[2] Wander’s detailed yet lucid observations “connecting word and image” (p. 21), found in the 56 mostly color illustrations (listed on pp. 11–16), make it an absolute pleasure to read.
While admitting that “the evidentiary standard” for his observations about the artworks “cannot be absolute certainty” (p. 23), each chapter that follows—including an excellent “Introduction” to Josephus’ life, works, and reception history—provides ample footnotes and “Further Reading” to guide readers through what might be unfamiliar terrain. Yet Wander’s insights will also interest experts on the individual artworks. He offers a précis (pp. 32–37) of the most important pieces analyzed in subsequent chapters, explaining that he will attempt what the towering scholar of both Josephus and art in the Middle Ages Heinz Schreckenberg needed to be done: “‘In addition to the attempts by Deutsch and myself, both of which yield only partial results … there remains a rich yield to be harvested’” (p. 37).[3]
Chapter 3 does real justice to the best known of these artworks, the sculpted relief of the spoils from the temple of Jerusalem, prominently featuring a table and menorah on the south interior of the Arch of Titus on the Velian Hill in Rome, which was erected after the emperor’s death in 81. Building upon briefer scholarly comments postulating a relationship between this relief and descriptions found in Josephus’ Jewish War and Jewish Antiquities, Wander argues convincingly for the direct influence of passages in both Josephan works upon the composition of this relief; he also takes into account the composition of the attic of this south relief that shows the triumphators with quadrigas, as well as the north interior relief of Titus. Excellent photographs of the reliefs and of engravings by Bartoli (1690) and Reelant (1716) accompany his argument, with the engravings allowing Wander to observe that though “two cups of gold filled with incense” on top of the shewbread table are not mentioned in the Flavian triumph scene in Jewish War 7, Jewish Antiquities 3.143 does have them (unlike Exodus 25.28–9 and 27.3). Wander concludes that “Josephus and his writings appear to be the immediate source for specific features” of this relief (p. 62), underlining the importance of the author and his works in Flavian Rome. Furthermore, Wander posits that the two other items that Josephus mentions during the triumph scene, the Law and the inner curtain of the Temple, could not be lumped with the objects from the Jerusalem temple that were later placed on public display in the Temple of Peace (dedicated in 75), because these two items were even more “holy” than the ones eventually depicted on the relief over a decade after the triumph, and thus they required sequestration at the Flavian palace (pp. 63–75). An addendum on the marble relief of Roman buildings from the Tomb of the Haterii (c. 100) argues that the arch titled “Arcus in Sacra Via Summa” on this relief is, indeed, the Arch of Titus “but there seems to have been no intent on the part of the sculptors – as appears to be the case with other structures on this panel – to mimic its actual appearance in detail” (p. 80).
Chapter 4 investigates the portrait labeled in Greek “Josephus, the Writer of History” (Bern, Burgerbibliothek, Cod. 50, 9th century), comprising the Latin text of Antiquities, Books 1–12 and all of War. Disputing interpretations of the strangely garbed Josephus who is depicted according to modern scholars “as oriental magician (Deutsch), military commander (Liebl), messenger (Schreckenburg) or temple priest (Taylor)” (p. 89), Wander instead suggests that this portrait is based upon a statue of Josephus attested by Rufinus, Eusebius, and Jerome that would have been placed at Rome on a pedestal bearing an inscription, such as that of M. Mettius Epaphroditus at Rome, which leads to a discussion of Josephus’ literary patron. Wander rejects the possibility of identifying the unnamed bust at the Ny Carlberg Glyptotek as Josephus, and then turns to the Franks (or Auzon) Casket’s remarkable depiction of scenes from the fall of Jerusalem, with its Old English (runic) and Latin inscriptions. He sees “significant parallels between the depiction of the Bern Josephus and carved figures from the scene of the Sack of Jerusalem on the rear panel” (p. 104). Most intriguingly, the lost portico mosaics from Rome’s S. Giovanni in Laterano (c. 1200) represented scenes from Josephus’ Jewish War that echo the Franks Casket, with Wander observing that “Rome was a repository for artistic traditions” and that the Lateran basilica was believed to be home to the Ark of the Covenant and other Temple objects when the portico was built (p. 115). He concludes that “even if direct connections between them [the Bern Josephus, the Franks Casket, and the lost San Giovanni portico mosaics] cannot be established, their shared lineage, documented through their common pictorial characteristics, seems indisputable” (p. 118). Wander’s careful scrutiny of figural and inscriptional details shines forth throughout this chapter.
The next three chapters treat medieval manuscripts that use mostly Josephus’ Jewish Antiquities “for the purposes of illustration, artistic purposes,” with Wander building upon extensive scholarship to argue in Chapter 5 that the illustrated Christian Topography of Kosmas Indikopleustes and the no longer extant biblical Codex Grandior of Cassiodorus possibly reflected the descriptions in Antiquities of the Tabernacle of Moses and the Temple of Solomon; “imagery designed by Cassiodorus and based on wording from Josephus then served as models for illuminations from the first quire of the Codex Amiatinus” (p. 121), even finding resonance between a verse inscription accompanying the depiction of Ezra and the writings of the Venerable Bede himself. Wander provides lovely illustrations from Sinait. gr. 1186 and Plut. 9.28 of the Christian Topography to show how closely they resemble Josephus’ description of the Tabernacle curtains (whose floral design is not mentioned in Exodus) and the seven-branched candlestick. Moreover, a Vatican manuscript of Christian Topography (p. 132) depicts the twelve tribes of Israelites in squares at the Tabernacle as soldiers, and Wander notes that Thackeray had already observed that Josephus used the layout of a Roman army camp for his depiction of the Israelite camp in Antiquities; Wander even provides an aerial shot of a Roman camp in Spain (p. 135) to prove the point. A deep discussion of the illustrations in the Codex Amiatinus of the Tabernacle and Ezra (as a scribe wearing the golden chalice-crown, which Bede notes Josephus mentions since he, too, was a priest, p. 167) follows. Finally, Wander explains that a fifth or sixth century mural fresco of “Saint Augustine” from the ancient Lateran Palace below the Sancta Sanctorum (along with the mosaic of an open cabinet holding the fours Gospels in the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia) may have inspired Cassiodorus to have Ezra depicted in three-quarter view and seated with an open book in front of an open book cabinet, which in turn inspired the illustration in the Codex Amiatinus. Wander is careful to state that connecting all these texts and artworks “cannot always be established with exactitude” (p. 177).
The shorter Chapter 6 treats depictions of scenes from Josephus in three manuscripts of a biblical and patristic miscellany called Sacra Parallela, with the late-ninth-century version (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cod. gr. 923) being “the most profusely illuminated Byzantine codex known” (p. 183). Two well-known Josephan scenes in this manuscript, Alexander the Great and the High Priest Jaddus (from Antiquities 11) and The Cannibalism of Mary, the daughter of Eleazar (from War 6), “have led some to suggest that they prove the existence of earlier illuminated Josephus manuscripts which no longer survive” (p. 189), though Wander counters that “it demonstrates only…that narratives from War and the Antiquities were suitable for illustration” (p. 190). What is striking about the Mary scene is that unlike the single Alexander picture, Mary appears four times down the entire right margin of fol. 227r, following the plot line in Josephus while emphasizing with four overlapping vignettes her descent from ‘good’ motherhood to infanticide and cannibalism, even offering leftovers to the soldiers in the last scene, which in War is the catalyst for the destruction of Jerusalem. The cannibal mother Mary is clearly one of the most vivid and memorable scenes from the fall of Jerusalem, an event that is a major cornerstone in Christian history from Late Antiquity onward, as Wander points out, but he also observes that the Sacra Parallela has placed this scene under a section “On famine” and notes that the text reorders the Josephan sentences of War [not Antiquities, as stated in n. 12 on p. 189] by starting with War 6.197, then on to the Mary story, yet capping it off with the prequel on how hunger makes the people in Jerusalem “like mad dogs” (War 6.193–6). Echoing Josephus’ description in War, there is far more empathy and humanity here than in the Eusebius passage that Wander quotes on “the punishment of God…for their [the Jews’] crime against the Christ of God” (p. 189). A short digression on scribal portraits from two Josephan manuscripts (one heavily damaged by bombing during WWII) follows, with Wander cleverly identifying one labeled “Rotbertus” as the scribe also of the Bern manuscript (p. 195). The reader is then rewarded with gorgeous plates from two different manuscripts’ depictions of Josephus presenting his text of War to Emperor Vespasian and his son Titus (pp. 195–9).[4] In Chapter 7, Wander sees the illuminations of the life of David in the Paris Psalter (Paris, Bibliotheque nationale, cod. gr. 139) as informed by Josephus’ Antiquities, not the biblical Books of Kings, noting that if Josephus leaves things vague, the artist reimagines it for a contemporary audience (e.g., the Coronation scene on p. 219).
Wander fulfills his promise of connecting word and image throughout his book, providing a remarkably detailed and engrossing journey that demonstrates the influence of Josephus’ texts not only upon artists in Rome but also upon the people across Europe who copied and illustrated his texts during their first millennium.
Notes
[1] Wander’s previous book, The Joshua Roll (Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 2012) laid the initial groundwork for investigating Josephus in art.
[2] See pp. 40–42 for bibliographies of Flavius Josephus and medieval artworks in publications prior to and after the year 2000.
[3] Heinz Schreckenberg, “Josephus in Early Christian Literature and Medieval Christian Art,” in H. Schreckenberg and K. Schubert, eds., Jewish Historiography and Iconography in Early and Medieval Christianity (Assen, Netherlands: Van Gorcum; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1992), 7–138, here p. 138; Wander explains that Guy Deutsch, Iconographie de l’illustration de Flavius Josèphe au temps de Jean Fouquet (Leiden: Brill, 1986), 30–34, covers only three manuscripts.
[4] Given that Josephus was born in 37 and Vespasian died in 79, making Josephus around 40 when presenting his War, the relatively youthful, wide-eyed Josephus with short brown hair strutting towards the Roman rulers in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, lat. 5058, fol. 3r (p. 196) seems much more accurate than the frowning, hunched-over, white-haired, long-bearded Josephus with a ‘Jewish’ cap presenting his text to the two Romans inside the beginning “Q” of Chantilly Musée Condé, ms. 775 (1633), fol. 95v (p. 199); Vespasian is (accurately) an old man here, and Titus fittingly has dark hair like a man in his 30s, though he was only two years younger than Josephus. Perhaps depicting Josephus as elderly was the artist’s way of making him seem like a venerable source for biblical history.