Gesu Appare Alla Maddalena (Jesus Appearing to the Magdalene). Fra' Beato Angelico (1387 - 1455)

The 8 x 8 grid, or chessboard motif, has been shown to underlie the esoteric geography of Europe, and to have been employed as a template in at least one 12th century world map, or mappus mundi. Now we examine a 15th century painting, Gesu Appare Alla Maddalena, by Fra' Angelico, for evidence of this same archetype in art.

As Funck-Hallet has pointed out (Composition et nombre d'or dans les oeuvres peintes de la Rennaissance, Paris, Vincent, Freuls, 1950), there is a rich, if virtually unknown and unexplored tradition, of geometry, hidden, or encoded, into the works of many of the Old Masters. It is abundantly clear that the extraordinarily complex and exquisite geometrical constructions which have been unveiled in such paintings, point to their obviously fundamental importance in the mind and intentions of the painter. Yet, any discussion of the influence of this element of hidden geometry in such works remains almost entirely absent from art history, criticism and theory.

The Fra' Angelico painting depicts the resurrected Jesus appearing to Mary Magdalene, in the scene described in John 20:14 - 17. The tomb in which his body had been lain appears at the left, and the door is open. In the gospel account it is said that Mary mistook the figure who appeared before her for a gardener, and for this reason Christ is depicted carrying an axe.

The feint construction lines which have been overlaid in pencil represent the division of the painting into a grid of 8 x 8 squares, using the full width of the lower edge of the canvas to derive the side of the large square. The diagonals of the 8 x 8 grid have also been drawn, together with the diagonals of the four, 4 x 4, corner squares.

There can be little doubt that this grid was employed to lay out the various elements of the composition. The diagonals of the upper right 4 x 4 block meet on the brow of Christ. The axe is carefully aligned along one of these lines. The reason for the curious assymetry in the cross within the halo around his head also becomes apparent: each of the three visible arms of the cross is aligned on the grid lines through this brow point. His right foot and right index finger are both exactly touching vertical grid lines.

Turning to Mary Magdalene, we find more confirmation: both of her hands are arranged so that thumb and index finger touch grid-lines. Her halo is exactly the height of one square, and the top of it falls precisely on a horizontal line. The limits of her garment, and even the folds in the material, appear to be carefully composed in reference to the underlying construction grid.

These examples alone should be sufficient to establish that Fra' Angelico chose to portray this subject arranged on a grid of 8 x 8 squares. One reason for doing this was undoubtedly to achieve a harmonious combination of elements making up the composition of the painting. However, there are also deeper symbolic aspects attached to this choice to encode gesture by geometry, to embue the surface reading of the work with a subliminal language, undetected, unnoticed by the viewer. There are in such techniques possibilities to make very specific metaphoric statements, even to speak directly with the unconscious, by this use of geometry as a universal pre-verbal language. In this way, the painter can address aspects of the narrative which ordinarily would require or pre-suppose some kind of explicit context by which to make sense of the references. Geometric triggers are used to acess specific archetypes whose associations are grouped together in the unconscious (for example, the relationship between the concepts of "death" and "west", which in this instance may be amplified and detailed to an exact and specific set of spatial co-ordinates). This is achieved by bypassing the conscious level of interpretation and allowing the unconcious to supply its own context out of the deep common sea of such images which we all share.

The specific motif of the Gates of Death in the west is just such an archetypal form which re-occurs in all cultures and times, simply because it derives in the first instance from astronomical realities which are true for all earth locations. All of the tombs and pyramids of the ancient Egyptians are to be found on the West bank of the Nile for this very reason. In this painting, the tomb in which Christ was lain after death is depicted on the left, or west side. However, He has now risen, and so appears on the right, or eastern side, to correspond with the rising sun. Thus the position of the tomb and the resurrected Jesus have been carefully ordered to allow the unconscious mind of the viewer to draw the metaphorical conclusions which the painter desired to communicate. In this case, he is attempting to show Christ as the Solar Archetype par excellence, and his death and resurrection as astronomical types. This by no means reduces the story to a mere allegory of the physical world, but rather helps to reveal it in a Lost Light.

Note that the door of the tomb provides the clearest evidence that the 8 x 8 grid is the correct subdivision of the painting. The edge of the door falls exactly on the vertical grid line at left of picture. Further, if these individual grid-squares are divided into 8 x 8 smaller squares, then this smaller dimension is seen to be the exact width of the surround of the door. The bold design of the door acts to calibrate the hidden 8 x 8 grid in the mind of the viewer of the painting, to establish it as the controlling factor of the action. One might go so far as to say that the door is the explicit signature of the grid in this depiction.

The location of this Door of the Tomb, in the west, at the centre (on the "solstice" line), and positioned precisely on the grid, mirrors the position of the Straits of Gibraltar in the geography of Europe, and the Gates of Dan in the esoteric landscape. Hence, in every sense of this scene depicted by the painting, Christ had passed through the Gates of Death and Re-birth, a Journey which is both metaphorical and literal, and also specifically geographical.

Related Pages:

Grid Construction of the regular heptagon

Hidden Geometry in Art:
Pierro Della Francesca:
Fra Angelico 
Fra Luca Pacioli
Denderah Zodiac

Geometrical Analysis of the East Meon Crop Circle

© Simon Miles 1999