The Prophet Isaiah. Artist: Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld. Engraver: unknown. Source: Die Bibel in Bildern, Plate 139. Click on image to enlarge it.
For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counseller, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. . . . But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. . . . Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.[Isaiah 9:6, 45: 5, 12; King James Bible;]
Many nineteenth-century interpreters of scripture believed that Biblical figures who were types of Christ, such as Moses and Aaron, and the Hebrew prophets all had visions of Christ and Christianity, which they did not disclose to their contemporaries because they were not yet ready for such spiritual truths. Here Schnorr, who so often presents such types without referring to what they prefigure, here depicts Isaiah having a vision not only of Mary and the child Christ and Christ carrying his cross but also of the so-called prophetic type of Genesis 3:15 — “And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.” Bruising the heel of man was understood to refer to the Crucifixion. — George P. Landow.
Related material
- Bruising the Serpent's Head — a Prophetical Type
- Bruising the Serpent's Head and Gerard Manley Hopkins's typological allusions
- Trampling the Serpent's Head — a pre-nineteenth-century example from Viviers, France
- Saint Michael Slaying the Dragon Satan, a stained-glass window by Burne-Jones
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Bibliography
Die Bibel in Bildern [Picture Bible] von Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld. Leipzig: Georg Wigands, 1860. Hathi Digital Trust Library online version of a copy in the Columbia University Library. Web. 25 June 2016.
Last modified 29 June 2016