The Dual Nature: Commentary - Essay Example

Not all artists and painters see Christ in the same light. For instance, Pieter Bruegel points to the “humanity and vulnerability of Christ's Child.”2, more so his painting also depicts the inhumanity of the people surrounding the infant Christ. The artwork of Giovanni Bellini (1459-1516) interests me particularly.

His depiction of Christ ‘resting peacefully’ is superb. Although Jesus Christ was nailed to the cross after being severely tortured, his body hardly bears any mark of torture. He is shown lying across the lap of his mother, peacefully sleeping. However he is not really sleeping as in biblical traditions, sleep was considered “a natural metaphor for death”3. This piece interests me because by showing so little in his paintings, he tells a whole lot more. In his other painting the infant Christ is lying in the lap of the Virgin Mary and the look on her face suggests that she knows the fate of her child.

In the background, the white crane fights with the snake; a possible interpretation is that Christ will fight the devil where the devil is represented by the snake, plus in some traditions, a crane is regarded as a “harbinger of spring and hence of new life.”