THE Census at
Bethlehem, a painting in the Royal Museums of the Fine Arts of
Belgium, in Brussels, may well be the most "secular" of all
Bruegel's religious paintings. In fact, it is hard to see anything
obviously religious about it at all.
Although the title
identifies it as a familiar moment in the nativity story, we might
be forgiven for thinking that it was merely a genre painting,
illustrating winter life in a 16th-century Netherlandish town.
And, at one level, this is
what it is. Bruegel is doing what he does so well - bringing to
life the sights, sounds, and even smells of his age: the slaughter
of a pig outside the inn where the taxes are being collected;
children skating and tobogganing on the ice; a group of soldiers
huddled round a fire; workmen erecting a wood-framed shelter;
pack-bearers struggling across a frozen river; and much, much
more.
And, while any competent
painter could use a covering of snow to suggest winter, Bruegel's
bare trees, outlined against a stippled brown sky, his weary flocks
of crows, and the dark red of the setting sun make us feel the cold
seeping into our bones. This is indeed a bleak midwinter.
We could stop here, and it
would be enough. Bruegel would have given us a picture we can pore
over, relish, and return to again and again, always discovering new
details to delight and fascinate. Note how the outer fortifications
of the town are shown as broken and crumbling away, as if to
suggest that - for all its perpetual motion - this is a world that
is passing away, eking out its cold existence in the shadow of past
glories. But there is more.
If we look again, slightly
to the right of centre, we notice the unassuming figure of a young
woman seated on a donkey, apparently just arriving in town: Mary.
And, once we see her, the balance of the whole picture changes. But
what is it about her that holds our gaze, and makes her the true
focus of this busy scene, the still centre of this teeming
world?
Perhaps it is just that -
her stillness. This is a picture full of movement. Everyone is up
and doing, or watching what others are doing - bustling, shoving,
peering, staring; in short, a heaving mass of humanity.
But Mary is not involved in,
or attentive to, any of this. Her head is slightly bowed, and her
face - again uniquely - is turned towards us, the viewers. But she
is not exactly looking at us, either. Rather, she seems absorbed in
herself, pondering the words she treasures in her heart, and
brooding on the mystery she carries in her womb: the Word becoming
flesh.
Nor are any of the crowd
giving her a second glance. She passes unnoticed through their
midst. If only they knew that it was through her - this quiet,
unassuming young woman - that a new and eternal light would shine
into this bleak midwinter world, then, surely, they would look.
Karl Barth spoke of the
"secularity of the Word", and Søren Kierkegaard of the divine
"incognito" - and what picture could better reveal this, the true
humility of the incarnation, arriving without a fanfare,
unobserved, unrecognised, but full of grace for all the world.
The Revd Dr George Pattison is Lady Margaret Professor of
Divinity in the University of Oxford, and Canon Residentiary of
Christ Church, Oxford