Bernard Salomon's illustrations to Petrarch's Trionfi (6)

continued from Part V

Salomon’s "Triumph of Eternity"

compared to others.

The "Triumph of Eternity," the last triumph in Petrarch’s series, was traditionally rendered in art as if it were a "Triumph of Divinity," and was called such in numerous editions and translations of the Trionfi during the Renaissance. Panofsky explains that the image of "Divinity" was unconsciously substituted for that of "Eternity" because, although Petrarch specifies "Eternity" (Eternità), it is clear that it is "Divinity" that is implied. The difference in meaning is not exactly the same as between the terms "secular" and "religious," rather, the difference is one of focus.

NOTE: Erwin Panofsky, Problems in Titian Mostly Iconographic, (The Wrightsman Lectures), New York, New York University Press, 1969, p. 60.

Images of this final triumph habitually incorporated the Trinity or God-the-Father; but Salomon’s image differs markedly with tradition. Another such divergence can be seen in the Trionfi published in France just before Salomon’s. Denys Janot’s 1538 edition (Paris) presents Divinity as a heavenly explosion of power, stars and light. The Salomon image, instead, introduces a three-faced head, one of the few appearances of the so-called "Tri-cephalic Trinity," rare enough in Christian iconography, but unique among images associated with Petrarch’s Trionfi. Both the Janot and the Salomon de Tournes series, however, continue to title the last segment of the poem a "Triumph of Divinity," and it is in this context, of course, in which it must be understood.

This tri-cephalic image of Divinity projects an aura in the form of a multitude of radii. A band of seraphim circumscribe the charged atmosphere of the Holy Presence. A divine force whips the flowing locks of seraphic hair into celestial fire, releasing the divine power into the atmosphere. The whole is therefore as much a solar image, located in the heavens -- a Pseudo-Dionysian (after Pseudo Dionysus the Areopagite) image turned kinetic. But it is also a vision -- a vision within the vision of the Trionfi itself -- and hovers low over the landscape, which is bare and denuded save for the broken body of Father Time, victor over Fame, now defeated by this august divine presence. The spell of this being (for want of a better word) is "surrealistic." Cast in human form, its logic obeys philosophy not human form. It is hieroglyphic but anthropomorphized, an hallucinogenic emblem of the sort found in Kerver’s 1543 edition of Horapollo.

* * *

The following study shows that Salomon’s image of Divinity develops its power by synthesizing several philosophical and theological ideas that had been applied to images of this kind and that pertain to the meaning of Petrarch’s text for the "Triumph of Eternity."

Like Salomon’s, some versions of this ultimate triumph had also set the event in the heavens, but such representations were not common. (But see the Triumph of Divinity in the Hampton Court Tapestries.) More usual was the representation of the "Triumph of Eternity" (qua Trinity) as one of the triumphal carts in the procession of carriages in parade. In these, the panoply of festivity dominates Petrarch’s allegorical content. Of those examples which have come to my attention only Salomon’s version attempts to turn the image of the "Triumph of Eternity" (which outwardly takes the form of a device or impressa) into a clear moral narrative. His is one of the few that envision the triumph as an event of dramatic (as opposed to "narrative") content, a content paradoxically heightened by the stasis of its emblematic format, but a content that expresses the notion of finality and transforms the sequence into a dramatic whole. The introduction of narrative and drama into the usually static world of the Renaissance impressa is unusual, and must be due, in part, to the nature of Petrarch’s poem, which, itself, is dynamic and expresses change. The development in the fifteenth century of the iconography of the triumphal procession to give form to the Petrarchan sequence -- which begins with the victory of Love over everyone, including the most noble and notable, and ends with the victory of Eternity over Time -- may have been due to a long tradition of interpreting these events statically. But toward the second half of the sixteenth century, in Italy, the procession is given new movement: thus in the Giolito edition of the Trionfi published in 1544 in Venice, there is great activity; Death, in his triumph, for example, dances with great vitality upon a funerary wagon speeding him into the distant landscape.

In contrast, Salomon’s contemporary image is geometrically simplified and hieroglyphic; but, it is not this aspect alone to which it owes its uniqueness. Denys Janot’s triumphal images, cited above, may be suitably schematic antecedents to Salomon’s Petrarchan emblems, but the Janot images pursue the hieroglyphic content at the expense of dramatic content. Without a human drama, the Janot emblems fall into a schemetic literalism.

NOTE: See elsewhere for a discussion of the relationship of this hieroglyphic tradition to some French sixteenth-century manuscripts which interpret the triumphs as if they were battles between the virtues and vices: Paris, Bibl. de l’Arsenal, ms. 5066 and Berlin, Deutsche Staatsbibliothek, ms. Phill. 1926.

On the other hand, even when dramatic and narrative solutions do occur in French Renaissance manuscripts, as in B.N. ms. fr. 594 (dated 1498-1515) and Arsenal ms. 6480 (attributed to the 1520s), the pictorialization sacrifices some of the drama for elaborate detail or for precious effects in painting.

In Italian manuscripts, too, emblematic solutions were posed for Petrarch’s Trionfi, such as those illustrations in a fifteenth-century manuscript said to be in the manner of Francesco di Giorgio (Madrid, Rés, 4-4a). This manuscript turns the processions into elaborate decorative contrivances midway between the conventional processional format and the antique grotesque.

NOTE: See Mario Salmi, Italian Miniatures, London, 1957, p. 53. and Essling-Müntz, Petrarque, p. 165.

Emblematic abbreviations appear in a fifteenth century Paduan manuscript of Petrarch’s Triumphs (Florence, Nat’l Library, ms. B.R. 103 [B.2.5]). Here are presented the usual processions with triumphal carts, but the conventional personifications have been replaced by emblematic objects that are paraded about. For example, Fame’s book is placed upon the Chariot.

NOTE: Ibid., fig. 83.

However, even when the emblematic language is close to Salomon’s, as it is in the Janot edition of the Triumphs, mentioned above, in which, for the "Triumph of Divinity" powerful rays burst from heavenly clouds, the august intensity of Salomon’s image of "Divinity" remains unique and unrivaled in Trionfi iconography.

In fact, the triple-faced head of Salomon’s "Divinity" is reminiscent of several distinct image types: of the Holy Face customarily appearing on Veronica’s sudarium and elsewhere,

NOTE: See, for example, the Holy Face which is placed in a celestial realm over the Garden of Paradise in a miniature of a manuscript in Rouen (Bibl. de la Ville, ms. 3024). Illustrated in Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting, vol. 2, pl. 73, fig. 158.

but more precisely, it recalls images of the rare tri-cephalic Holy Trinity, and also the triune visage that came to represent the states of time: past, present and future, used in the Middle Ages to signify either "Time" or "Prudence," but here transformed into an image of "Eternity" -- Petrarch’s original meaning.

NOTE: The image represents Prudence because it is a virtue belonging to those who can arm themselves against the vagaries of Fortune, that is, the disastrous effects of "Time" on man’s affairs. Typical is Josse Bade’s comment in his annotated translation (1502) of Petrarch’s Bucolicum carmen:

... fortune only harasses his people [those of the King of Naples assassinated in 1354] because they already place everything in the disposition of fortune. Those sustained by true virtue and prudence, and content with little from fortune, show a great disdain ...

Quoted from F. Simone, French Renaissance, p. 213.

Images of Prudence or Time are usually rendered as a fusion of three faces, each of a different age: youth, middle age and old age. It is not clear whether Salomon has this kind of image in mind; his intention is clouded somewhat by the small scale of the original medallion woodcut, which has a total height of only 5.25 cm. The tri-cephalic head (8.4 mm) seems to distinguish three separate ages, even though each head is bearded. At this scale, however, what appears to be lines of age on the head at the right could very well be lines of shading. Actually three ages do seem to be indicated: one can detect a withering and constriction in the features in the figure on the right which indicate old age, and a fullness and hardiness in the central figure, indicative of middle-age. However, as noted, in images of Prudence it is unusual that all three heads are bearded.

Tri-cephalic Trinities

Clearly, Salomon’s "Divinity" is one of the rare appearances of the so-called tri-cephalic Trinities. Such images must not have been too uncommon in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries since the Council of Trent went to the trouble of condemning them.

NOTE: Réau, Iconographie de l’art Chrétien. vol. 2, part 1, p. 21-22. Réau notes that Urban VIII in 1628 ordered such images destroyed, and that action against them was again taken in 1745 under Benedict XIV.

Even rarer during the Renaissance are tri-cephalic Trinities placed within solar orbs.

NOTE: In pre-Christian Gaul and elsewhere images of the sun-god were sometimes represented as three-headed. See R. Pettazzoni, "The Pagan Origins of the Three-Headed Trinity," J.Warb., vol. 9 (1946), p. 147. Cited is a vase from Fliegensberg, Troisdorf on which is depicted such a tri-cephalic image. The author believes this to represent "Sunday" -- the representation of the all-seeing power of the sun. Pettazzoni maintains (p. 149) this formulation was conducive to images of more than one face, for it best expresses seeing in all directions at once. Cited is a 12th-century Persian example. One such image of a tri-cephalic Trinity within a solar glow, by Andrea del Sarto, appears on the vault of the refectory of S. Salvi in Florence.

NOTE: S. Freedberg (Andrea del Sarto, Catalogue Raisonnée, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1963, p. 24, no. 13) dates this image to 1525 by virtue of a new reading of the documents. See also J. Shearman (Andrea del Sarto, Oxford, 1965, vol. 2, p. 205, no. 15) who cites similar Florentine uses of this three faced image. Notable is its appearance in the work of Donatello, on the pediment of the St. Louis niche of Or San Michaele where three aged faces, each with its own nimbus, are placed within a winged wreath. H.W. Janson (Donatello, Princeton, N.J., 1963, p. 53, n. 6) distinguishes between images of the Trinity and those signifying Prudence in order to show that Donatello’s represents the former. He also mentions similar subsequent uses of the three-headed Trinity and provides a bibliography.

This triune image is placed in a roundel and is surrounded by a colorful heavenly aura reminiscent somewhat of the type of glow surrounding Salomon’s.

NOTE: See Freedberg, op.cit., no. 13 for a color description of Sarto’s Trinity.

Another well known image of the three-headed Trinity within the sun or a sun-like orb is part of the bronze tomb of Sixtus IV. The tomb, by Antonio Pollaiuolo, begun in 1484 and signed in 1493, contains allegories of the liberal arts and sciences around its perimeter. The female Diana-like archer personifying Theologia turns backwards and receives inspiration from a Trinity conceived as three heads within a flaming solar disk. In his article on the tomb L.D. Ettlinger

NOTE: L.D. Ettlinger, "Pollaiuolo’s Tome of Pope Sixtus IV," J.Warb., vol. 16, 1953, p. 262 ff. The tomb is now in the Vatican Grottoes.

cites a passage from the Ovide Moralisé to show that Diana, signifying the moon, is linked to the Trinity. The passage is significant for our purposes because it associates the idea of the Trinity with Time and Eternity, and as such, provides an interesting precedence for the kind of visual fusion found in the Salomon image and which may also be seen in Maurice Scève’s Microcosme.

Dyane, c’est la Deïté
Qui regnoit en la Trinité
Nue, sans humaine nature,
Qu’ Acteon vit sans couverture,
C’est le fils Deur, qui purement
Vit benecite Trinité
Qui regnoit en eternité
Sans commence et san fin.

NOTE: Quoted by Ettlinger, op.cit., p. 263 from the Ovide Moralisé (ed. M. de Boer, Amsterdam, 1915, Bk. III, vv. 635 ff.). Panofsky (Tomb Sculpture, p. 87-88) notes that here the Trinity and the Sun are to be considered connected: "... the spirit of the rinasciment dell’antichità is eloquently manifested by the representation of Theology in the guise of a nude, reclining Diana -- a bold equation justified by the fact that sacred doctrine was believed to be illuminated yet dazzled by the light of the Trinity (which, therefore, here appears as a triple head encircled by a flaming halo) much as the moon-goddess is by the light of the sun."

[In margin: Compare Scève, Délie, Emblem II: Moon and Crescent: Entre toutes une parfaicte.]

Such images of Divinity within sun-like orbs reflect the common neo-Platonic association made between the sun and divine light. Plato associates the sun with the Idea of the Good; St. Augustine makes a similar metaphorical identity: The divine light of the sun illuminates the intellect (Soliloquia, 1, 8, 15).

NOTE: Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy, vol. 2, part 1: "Augustine to Bonaventure." (Image Books), Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, 1962, p. 77.

A similar idea finds elaborate expression in the works of Pseudo-Dionysus. Accordingly, following him, the sun becomes part of the universal hierarchy of Renaissance neo-Platonists, so that, for example, in the Heptaplus of Pico della Mirandola one reads the following:

In our world we have fire as an element, in the celestial world the co-responding entity is the sun, in the supra celestial world the seraphic fire of the Intellect. But consider their difference: The elemental fire burns, the celestial fire gives life, the supra-celestial loves.

NOTE: Heptaplus, 2nd Proem. Quoted from Gombrich, "Icones Symbolicae," Symbolic Images, p. 152. (Library of Liberal Arts, ed. p. 77.)

Pico’s metaphor anagogically connecting terrestrial fire, celestial sun and supracelestial love seems to have been transformed into an emblem used by Jean de Tournes as a printer’s mark in his edition of the works of Marguerite de Navarre. The emblem, designed by Bernard Salomon -- presumably under the influence of Maurice Scève --appeared only once among de Tournes’s editions -- in the 1547 edition of Marguerite’s poetry -- published the same year as the first edition of Salomon’s illustrations for the Trionfi. It was never used again. In this frontispiece emblem, Cupid is shown midst a rain of fire. He stretches one hand toward the sun, touching it; in the other hand he holds the bow. The sun in this emblem and the divine glow surrounding the triple-faced Divinity in Salomon’s illustration of the Triumph of Divinity must have related meanings. As seen in Pico’s metaphor, the associations made among Cupid, Love, the Sun and Fire was a neo-Platonic formula of long standing. On the emblem is the following motto: "Per ipsum facta sunt omnia" (By this very thing all things were made.) Elsewhere in the Heptaplus Pico associates the creation of the Sun with Christ, and significantly for our purposes, also with eternity:

Then came the fourth day, one which the sun, the lord of the firmament, that is, Christ, the lord of the law, ... began to shine forth for eternity, calling the world to eternal life.

NOTE: Bk. 7, ch. 4. ed.cit., p. 157.

Further on in the same chapter, which is devoted to Pico’s analysis for the fourth day of creation--the day in which the sun was created -- the author of the Heptaplus goes so far as to identify the sun not only with Christ, but also with the Trinity. He emphasizes their co-eternal and co-equal spirit and describes their power and influence in terms of the sun’s radiance. Clearly, Salomon’s tri-cephalic Sun/Trinity must be comprehended in this neo-Platonic atmosphere, but its specific point of reference is much closer to home. Pico’s passage deserves to be quoted in full (italics mine):

Therefore why do you wait for the sun, you blind ones? The sun is here and shines, but it shines in darkness, and your darkness does not comprehend it. The fourth day has passed, when the sun rose which has not destroyed the law but has perfected it, just as the sun does not demolish the firmament but adorns, perfects, and brightens it. We have proved from the order of the fourth day and from the time of Christ’s coming that what is said here ought to be understood in relation to him. Let us prove the same thing from a similarity of metaphor, since we can picture Christ by nothing more fitting than the sun. He placed his tabernacle in the sun, and he sprang from the tribe when Plato in the Republic calls the sun the visible son of God, why may we not understand it as the image of the invisible Son? If he is the true light illuminating all minds, does he not have his most exact likeness the sun, which is the light of the senses illuminating all bodies? But why do we look for anything else? Let us ask the sun itself, which, eclipsed behind the moon during Christ’s passion, clearly showed us the accordance of its nature.

With the best right, not to touch on any loftier reason, the day which the astrologers call the sun’s we have called the Lord’s day, and have surrendered it wholly to his worship. We have also shown that there is no further reason for us to worship the physical sun (as the gentiles once did) as king and lord of the sky, now that the invisible son, coeternal and coequal with the Father, by Whom both heaven and earth were made, has brought light to men, who were sitting in the shadow of death.

NOTE: Ibid., p. 163.

A syncretistic approach is taken by Geoffroy Tory in Champ Fleury (1529). Tory identifies the sun and its rays with Apollo as the source of the connection between the Muses, Liberal Arts, Cardinal Virtues and Graces. This is expressed as a diagrammatic emblem fashioned out of the continuously perfect outline of the letter "O." But most importantly, for us, Tory sees no difficulty in associating the sun with Apollo or God, however his reader may prefer it:

And in the very center of the O, I have drawn and portrayed Apollo playing upon his divine lyre, to show that the linking together and the round perfection of the Letters, Muses, Liberal Arts, Cardinal Virtues and Graces are inspired by Apollo, that is to say by the Sun, or if you like it better so, say by our true God the Creator, who is the veritable Sun, without whose aid all body and spirit is forever numb and vain, & without which we can have no knowledge of letters or of learning, or of any virtue whatsoever.

Tory continues, associating the circular perfection of the letter "O" with the notion of triumph, and refers the reader to Petrarch’s "Triumph of Fame" which represents to him a triumph of the gifts of Apollo.

NOTE: Geofroy Tory, Champ Fleury, tr. George B. Ives, N.Y., Dover, 1967, p. 72-73.

A third example of the tri-cephalic Trinity within a flaming disk appears as a source of inspiration in a painting by Fra Filippo Lippi. St. Augustine, is in his cell writing on the Trinity. He is inspired by a glowing apparition hovering over his desk (Florence, Uffizi). Here there is no question that the image represents a vision of the Trinity, but unlike the Sarto and the Pollaiuolo images, this glowing Trinity is not associated with the sun-disk. In Sarto’s version and in Pollaiuolo’s the Trinity is seen as three separate heads fused together, whereas in the vision seen by Lippi’s St. Augustine the Trinity is a triune face, more like the fused faces of Salomon’s image of the Trinity in the "Triumph of Divinity." It is not clear if these differences signify different meanings or simply represent different esthetic solutions for a common iconography. Of course, the use of a tri-cephalic image in a picture of Augustine must refer to his own concept of the trinity. See below.

In each of the above examples of the Trinity within a glowing disk no distinction by age is admitted, and it seems safe to conclude that the tri-cephalic Trinity as a type remained clearly distinct from other types of three-headed images, such as those representing the personification of Prudence, where age distinctions are important.

NOTE: Besides the example by Donatello, cited in an earlier note, one should mention the tri-cephalic image in Fra Bartolommeo’s Madonna, Child and Saints (Florence, Museo di S. Marco; illustrated in Berenson, Florentine Paintings, London, Phaidon, 1963, fig. 1329) of 1510/15. Also significant is the image of a Trinity on a single torso placed within an illuminated initial of a 15th-century Antiphony in the Museo di San Gemignano (illustrated in R. Pettazzoni, op.cit., p. 135 ff., pl. 16a). See G.J. Hoogewerff, "Vultus Trifrons Emblema Diabolico. Immagine Improba della Santissima Trinità," in Rendiconti della Pontificia Accademia Romana de Archeologia, ser. III, vol. XIX, 1942-42, p. 205 ff. for a survey of the tri-cephalic Trinity. None of the illustrated examples in the Hoogewerff article differentiate the Trinity by age. See also Willibald Kirfel, Die Dreiköpfige Gottheit, Bonn, 1948, and M. Didron, Iconographie Chrétienne, p. 527-605.

In North European Renaissance art the image of the tri-cephalic Trinity is exceedingly rare. Although there are images of the Holy Face appearing within the bursting rays of the sun-disk, such as the one on the reverse of the Reliquary of the Thorn of Jean de Berry (London, British Museum), none, to my knowledge, are tri-cephalic.

NOTE: Illustrated in Millard Meiss, French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry, London, Phaidon, 1969, vol. 2, fig. 824.

Like most images of the Trinity, Northern images usually distinguish between Father, Son and Spirit, but a few present the Trinity as three persons of the same form. The most famous of these appears in Jean Foucquet’s Hours of Étienne Chevalier. In the illumination showing the Trinity in Glory among the celestial hierarchy, three identical images of God displaying identical gestures of benediction appear before a triple Gothic Throne of Glory which floats in the angelic atmosphere.

NOTE: In the illustration of the Coronation of the Virgin in the same manuscript a similar image of the Trinity is presented, but the throne has been changed to one in the Renaissance style.

Also of interest in Foucquet’s Hours is the triple deity painted all in gold which appears in a roundel as the source of the heavenly ray which strikes Paul at the moment of his conversion, but it is not clear whether Foucquet intended this image to be three separate figures or just one.

NOTE: Réau (op. cit., p. 22) claims that this is a single figure, but is more likely a condensation of the type of figures which appeared in the Belles Heures of Jean de Berry (N.Y., Cloisters). On the leaf showing the duke’s second wife, Jean de Boulogne in prayer (fol. 91^v) appear the three figures of the Trinity, identical in aspect--each crowned and bearded--and surrounded by a gold nimbus and red seraphim. This Trinity is clearly separate and is not fused into one body. (The three figures read from an open book that is held by four hands--one from each of the outer figures and two hands of the central figures.) See The Belles Heures of Jean, Duke of Berry Prince of France. Introd. James J. Rorimer, N.Y. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1958, pl. [30].

More curious is the image of the three persons of the Trinity fused into one in a manuscript Book of Hours by the Rohan Master (Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, ms. 62, fol. 136^v).

NOTE: Millard Meiss, French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry: The Limbourgs and their Contemporaries, N.Y., George Braziller and the Pierpont Morgan Library, vol. 2, fig. 865, and vol. I, p. 306-7. Dated by Meiss, ca. 1417-18.

[In margin: But: Tapestry of Triumph of Divinity (Part of a Petrarch Cycle) which represents the Trinity as three equal persons: Coll. Paul Duncan (?), Essling-Müntz, p. 212. Madrid/Berlin Tapestry (var. Madrid) has Triumph of Divinity with Trinity as three equal persons. E/M, p. 274 ff.]

These figures are distinguished by age; the oldest figures are in the center and the others flank him, but attached to the same trunk. It is difficult to believe that this artist wanted the image to refer to the three ages of man. The arrangement of "ages" is not conducive to such a theory -- usually middle age is in the center of such images. This image appears to be the product of an accidental (or purposeful) association of the Trinity with a Byzantine Deësis; this would explain why the figures on the left is bearded and why the one on the right is not. [RAB: check image.]

NOTE: Three figures fused into one body represent the Trinity in a fourteenth-century Sienese triptych by Luca di Tomme. See The International Style: The arts in Europe around 1400 [Exhibition catalogue] Baltimore, The Walters Art Gallery, 1962, no. 17, p. IX. The catalogue mentions some probable precedents for this image. Didron, op.cit., p. 596 illustrates a three headed Trinity which distinguishes the figures by age appearing in a Florentine edition of Dante (1491, Paradisio, f.CCLXXVIII). Again the oldest faces front, the youngest right, and the middle aged person faces left. It is unlikely that the intent here was to create an association with images of the Three ages of man, but it does seem probable that such distinctions may have led to a fusion between the types of "Trinity" and "Time."

If tri-cephalic and triple-faced images are rare in the major arts of the North, they can be found more often in the minor arts and book illustrations. In these they do not appear in the context usually reserved for the Trinity in the major pictorial arts, that is, in conjunction with the crowning of the Virgin or with the Crucifixion, but tend to be used in images of abstract cosmological scope and purpose.

One may think of the tri-cephalic Trinity as an emblem rather than as a pictorialization of the Trinity itself. Could it have a confusion resulting from a misunderstanding of the metaphorical purpose of such an emblem, when compared to the form the Trinity took when illustrated in the form stipulated by dogma, that led to the eventual condemnations of the tri-cephalic image, cited above?

Be that as it may, it is as an emblem that a tri-cephalic Trinity appears in a Book of Hours published in 1524 by Simon Vostre [in margin: Kerver] in Paris. Here the three faces are combined with a triangular diagram intended to explain the mystery of the Trinity.

NOTE: Illustrated in Didron, op. cit., p. 575, fig. 141.

In this example the three-headed God is shown with his hands resting on two of the three circles that form the angles of the triangle. These two corners contain the words "Pater" and "Filius." The third angle contains "Spiritus Sanctus." Each angle is connected to the other two by a bar in which is written "non est." In addition, each of the three corners is connected by bars labeled "est" to a circle in the center containing the word "Deo." Following the roads provided by the diagram one can read "Pater non est Filius" and so forth, and Pater est Deo," and so forth. The triangular composition of the diagram is echoed by the triangular image of God with three heads. The unused sections outside of the two attached triangular forms are filled with the symbols of the evangelists. Thus, in this illustration the three-headed God should be understood, not as an image of God, but as a personification of the diagram; its presence is abstract and intellectual like a diagram, but not a form made in the image of God. The relationship is somewhat like the relation of Salomon’s Petrarchan emblems to those that appeared in the Janot edition.

NOTE: Compare the following passage from St. Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine (i, 5) to the Simon Vostre diagram:

The things which are to be enjoyed are the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, a single Trinity, a certain supreme thing common to all who enjoy it, if, indeed, it is a thing and not rather the cause of all things, or both a thing and a cause. It is not easy to find a name proper to such excellence, unless it is better to say that this Trinity is one God and that "of him, and by, him, and in him are all things." [Cf. 2 Cor. 5. 6 (Vulg.).] Thus there are at the same time all are one God; and each of them is a full substance, and at the same time all are one substance. The Father is neither the Son nor the Holy Spirit; the Son is neither the Father nor the Holy Spirit; the Holy Spirit is neither the Father nor the Son. But the Father is the Father uniquely; the Son is the Son uniquely; and the Holy Spirit is the Holy Spirit uniquely. All three have the same eternity, the same immutability, the same majesty, and the same power. In the Father is unity, in the Son equality, and in the Holy Spirit a concord of unity and equality; and these three qualities are all one because of the Father, all equal because of the Son, and all united because of the Holy Spirit.

Note also that the last thought is reproduced almost exactly by Nicholas of Cusa. For him the unity of the God-head logically and necessarily invokes the Trinity: Unity implies Equality, and Equality implies Connection. See further, H. Bett, Nicolas of Cusa, p. 147. (Augustine quote, above, from Library of Liberal Arts edition, p. 10).

Dating from 1547, the same year as Salomon’s Trionfi cycle, is another Book of Hours, containing what must be the best known tri-cephalic image of this period. The frontispiece of the manuscript Book of Hours made for Henri II in the year of his coronation (Paris, B.N. ms. lat. 1429, vol. 3^v) shows a tri-cephalic deity stretching his arms over the heavens, as if in the act of creating them.

NOTE: Illustrated but not identified in Didron, Iconographie (op.cit., p. 580, fig. 142, n. 1) and in Willibale Kirfel, Die Dreiköpfige Gottheit (Bonn., Ferd. Dümmlers Verlag, 1948, pl. 60, fig. 178, discussed on p. 156) On the Hours of Henri II see L’École de Fontainebleau [Exhibition catalogue], Paris, Musées Nationaux, 1972, no. 227, p. 242 where the history of attribution and its connection to related manuscripts is surveyed. There is also a complete bibliography. See also V. Leroquais, Les Livres d’Heures manuscrits de la Bibliothèque nationale. Vol. 1, Paris, 1927, no. 139, pp. 276-279, and pl. CXXVII for a complete description.

The pose and the relation of the image to the schematic of the universe appearing here reminds one of the Trinity of the Vostre Hours, but instead of a diagram of the Trinity, one finds a diagram of the cosmos. In essence the miniature is a theological program connecting the story of the Creation, as found in the Old Testament, with the Gospel of John. The tri-cephalic God of this scene embraces the heavens composed of the outermost sphere of fixed stars and the concentric rings of the moving planets, identified by their astrological symbols. On the bottom of the miniature, that is, in the center of its universe, perches the nimbed eagle of John the Evangelist holding writing instruments within its beak. The eagle stands upon a scrolled cartouche upon which is inscribed the opening line from the Book of Genesis: "In principio creavit coelum et terram." It seems obvious that the intent of the illustration is to associate the opening of John’s Gospel ("In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God; and the Word was God.") with the first words of Genesis: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." The purpose of this unusual iconography is made all the more clear by its placement before four pages of text excerpted from the four Gospels.

There is, in fact, nothing unusual in the history of Christian exegesis about the association of God-the-Father as Creator of the universe and the opening passage of St. John’s Gospel. It has been shown that the connection between the two accounts of Creation -- Old Testament and New Testament -- was a commonly used trope from Early Christian times onwards and was often used to show that the God of the Old Testament Creation was identical as the Trinitarian God of the New Testament.

NOTE: See Adelheid Heimann, "Trinitas Creator Mundi," J.Warb., vol. 2, 1938-39, p. 42 ff. The author cites the relevant literature. The opening of John’s Gospel was often read as referring to the Trinity.

The connection between Creation and the Trinity reappears in the literature of the neo-Platonists, as seen, for example, in Pico della Mirandola’s Haptaplus, his Platonist schematization of the days of Creation as told in Genesis:

... There are many signs of the Holy Trinity in the creation. We shall here take up only one of these, which as far as I know has not hitherto been brought up by anyone: the fact that the unity which we see in creatures is of three different modes. First, there is the unity in things whereby each is one to itself, remains the same as itself, and is in harmony with itself. Secondly, there is that through which one creature is united to another and through which all parts of the world are ultimately one world. The third and most important of all is that whereby the whole universe is in one with its Maker, as an army is with its leader. This threefold unity is present in each thing through its own single and simple unity derived from that One which is both the first one and at the same time three and one, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. The power of the Father, creating everything, distributes his own unity to all; the wisdom of the Son, setting all in order, unites them and ties them together; and the love of the Spirit, turning everything toward God, attaches the whole work to its Maker by the bond of charity.

NOTE: Bk. 6, Proem. Library of Liberal arts edition, p. 139.

What is unusual about the image in the Hours of Henri II is the programmatic syncretism of the illustration. Images of the Genesis Creation are known that show the Trinity, but none, to my knowledge, so intimately connect the Creation with the opening of John’s Gospel. The method used here, ironic though it may seem, is essentially that of the Biblia Pauperum of the Speculum Humanae Salvationis. [In margin: cf. Anton Sorg ed. with tri-cephalic image.] It is also unusual that an image of God creating the heavens is placed in a New Testament Context; more often such images appeared as part of Creation cycles of the sort commonly found in Medieval Bibles. Of all the examples cited by Adelheid Heimann in her article on the Trinity as depicted during the Creation

NOTE: See note above.

none specifically connect John’s Gospel with the Genesis Creation.

Indeed, images of the Trinity creating the world are rare, yet persistent motifs in the history of Christian iconography. For example, a twelfth-century Bible in the monastery of Michelbeuren, known as the Walters Bible,

NOTE: Ms. perg. I. fol. 6. Heimann, op. cit., pl. 4b.

shows the Trinity as three distinct persons at work creating the world. The page is divided into six segments, one for each day of creation, not an unusual arrangement. In the first segment, showing the work of the first day, the separation of darkness from slight is represented by a circle divided by a horizontal line. All above is light and all below is dark. In the image representing the work of the second day, the divisions of the waters below from the firmament above, again the work is done by the Trinity standing outside of the sphere of creation. In this phase concentric rings within the sphere of the cosmos signify the day’s work. It would seem that the scheme presented in the Walters Bible has little or nothing to do with the type of creation presented in the Henri II Hours, the source of which must be traced to a different convention.

In a Spanish thirteenth-century manuscript of the Chronicles of Isadore of Seville a miniature of the Creation presents God-the-Father in the form of an unusual Trinity.

NOTE: Didron, Iconographie Chrétienne, p. 567, fig. 138. Identified as ms. 7135 of the Bibliothèque Royale. (Present shelf-mark not available.)

The Trinity, a winged two-headed creature, embraces a sphere diagonally crossed by a row of stars. As a sign of the act of creation this deity holds a wand. Illustrations of this type surely must have been the source for creation cycles appearing in a series of Neapolitan manuscripts of the mid fourteenth century. One of these, the Hamilton Bible, in the Berlin Printroom

NOTE: Heimann, op. cit. pl. 6a.

divides the early history of the world into eight scenes, beginning with the creation and ending with the slaying of Abel.

As in the Chronicles of Isadore of Seville, the Creator is conceived of as a two-headed winged figure. Ostensibly, the head with the long beard represents the Father, the unbearded head is that of the Son, and the Holy Spirit is signified by the outstretched wings.

It has been suggested that this rather unusual presentation has been inspired by ancient images of the two-headed Janus, a classical figure kept alive during the Middle Ages as the personification of the month of January.

NOTE: Heimann, op. cit., p. 48.

Janus, as keeper of the gate (hence janitor), guardian of past and future, or better, as a figures which can be associated with "time outside of time" represents a concept that is consistent with longstanding notions of the creation. The relationship of Janus to the Genesis creation will be discussed below. [In margin: i.e. Janus/Stradanus--Creation of the New World.]

The two scenes in the Hamilton Bible devoted to the Creation have much in common with the Chronicles manuscript, and in turn lead directly to the Creation miniature of the Henri II Book of Hours. It is tempting to speculate that the path leading from the Neapolitan to the French manuscript was paved by France’s longstanding claim to the crown of Naples, sought with much fervor by Henri’s father, François I^er. Be that as it may, the formal similarities seem sufficient to establish the connection. As in the Chronicles, the Hamilton Bible deity uses a wand to create the world; both present God as the Trinity in the guise of a winged Janus; and in the first of the Hamilton Bible creation images, the Trinity seems to embrace the created cosmos, much as the tri-cephalic God of the Henri II manuscript does. The first of the two Hamilton images is crossed by the zodiacal diagonal, and in both the outer ring (beyond the heavenly start in the second image) must have been intended to represent the empyrean. In the first image one sees the nucleus of the unformed Earth; in the second the Earth has developed recognizable features. As in most illustrations of the Biblical creation, when presented in cycle form, these images conform to the description of creation in the Bible.

In contrast, the creation scene of the Henri II Book of Hours distinguishes itself by virtue of its independence from Old Testament creation iconography. It does not fuss with the details of the days. Rather, it should be viewed as the hierarchy of creation, placing God, the Heavens and the Earth (the latter signified by the Evangelist’s eagle) in their fixed order.

Not much is known about the maker of the Hours of Henri II. It is fashioned in the style of the School of Fontainebleau and at one time or other has been placed in the ambiance of Rosso, given to Jean Cousin, and compared to another well known manuscript, the Hours of Anne de Montmorency (Musée Condé, Chantilly, ms. 1943). Except for the presumption of a Fontainebleau connection, and those similarities shared by books in general, there is little here with to connect it stylistically to Salomon’s work. Certainly, this manuscript has little in common with the sober forms presented in Salomon’s Petrarch cycle. Yet, there is reason to believe that images such as the Creation in the Hours of Henri II supplied an important measure of meaning to the creator of Salomon’s severe image of Divine Triumph. That is, it is suggested here that Salomon’s tri-cephalic emblem was developed by way of abstraction from such an image, thus carrying with it that notion of God implied within its source.

At first, it would not seem likely that an image of the creation would be an appropriate source from which to develop an emblem for Petrarch’s ultimate triumph; but, in fact, the motive for using creation iconography is suggested by Petrarch himself. Correspondingly, in Italy, the earliest known representations of Petrarch’s "Triumph of Eternity" make use of creation images. [RAB:Which one?]

By investigating Petrarch’s concept of Eternity, its roots in Augustinian notions of Creation, Time, and the Trinity, and the implications that this idea of Time had for French Trionfi cycles, it can be demonstrated how the tri-cephalic Trinity Salomon presents can become a just emblem for the "Triumph of Divinity." What is meant by this emblem, of course, is not "Divinity" in its nominal sense, as commonly represented by the image of the Trinity. Rather, the "Divinity" implied by Salomon’s image implies "Eternity" such as was conceived by Augustine, transmitted by Petrarch and interpreted neo-Platonically by such poets as Maurice Scève. The meaning of this emblem develops out of those mystical connections that the neo-Platonists posited as existing between words and images -- the core of the philosophy of the emblem. [In margin: Even so, its ultimate effect is to make Petrarch’s text to which the image is attached read as if its subject were closer to the speculations of Nicholas of Cusa than to the poetic humanism of Petrarch.]