A THOUSAND WORDS
Poussin's The Holy Family on the Steps
At first blush, Nicolas Poussin's painting The Holy Family on the Steps (1648) is a restrained and classical version of the conventional Holy Family of a thousand Christmas cards, or rather, an extended Holy Family with Saints Elizabeth and John (who, after all, must have been frequent visitors). Mary and Jesus occupy the central space; above Mary's right shoulder stands an urn filled with their special flower, the violet of humility. The open air above Jesus' head creates a kind of natural halo. At the left, Elizabeth directs her gaze toward Mary, and the infant John offers his baby cousin a piece of fruit from the basket at his feet. Joseph, cast in shadow, assumes an apparently subsidiary role at the right, filling out the triangle of the figural composition.
A contemporary engraving made after this painting suggests that there is more here than meets the eye. The print faithfully reproduces the painting but in addition bears the cryptic inscription, "Here is made manifest the hidden God." Surely this cannot refer to Jesus; his manifestation was not hidden, but made known in an epiphany to all the world, as is symbolized by the gifts of the Magi on the steps at Joseph's feet. Instead, there are clues here that this is not just the Holy Family but also a Trinity, the hidden God made manifest in all three Persons.
Signs of the Trinity
To begin with, the five figures are arranged in a strong, nearly equilateral triangle, a clear signal of the Holy Trinity. And the three Persons of the Trinity are signaled with equal clarity. Jesus is obviously Jesus, the second Person. Elizabeth is here to remind us of the special relation of Mary and the Holy Spirit: she, and John in her womb, were the first to recognize the divinity of Mary's unborn child: "And who am I, that the mother of my Lord should visit me?" (Luke 1:43). And finally, and somewhat unusually, the Person of God the Father is manifested in Joseph.
Scripture provides artists with no visual material to associate with Joseph, so throughout the history of art, this saint has been depicted with attributes borrowed from other sources and persons: he often bears the attributes of the little old man assigned to him by the pseudo-Gospels, for instance, or he carries the lilies of Mary's purity, and so forth.
Here, he borrows another set of clothes, the royal purple robes of the omnipotent Father. The kingly gifts are set at his feet. He is in shadow, hidden, under a cloud that billows up over his head. In the Old Testament, a cloud always signals the presence of God, and so too in the New Testament, a cloud takes Jesus out of the apostles' sight, and will bring him again in glory at the end of all things. Furthermore, Joseph is scribing with a compass and has a measuring stick at hand, as if to reference God the Father's measuring out of the universe.
St. Joseph Revitalized
The portrayal of Joseph as a powerful and kingly figure marks a serious shift in the history of art. Around the turn of the fifteenth century, preachers and theologians began to make a conscientious effort to reshape the image of this saint. The theologian Jean Gerson at the University of Paris, his mentor Pierre d'Ailly, the bishop of Cambrai, and San Bernardino of Siena all published treatises on St. Joseph, holding him up as a model of family virtue and a model for men.
Why St. Joseph, and why then? With the waning of the Middle Ages, a certain amount of social upheaval resulted in unintended consequences for marriage: while the marriage age of men was delayed, that of women grew younger and younger. Marriage fell on hard times, a fact that is somewhat glossed over in the social histories. In the late Middle Ages, it was as easy to dissolve a marriage as it is today, with similar consequences. The rules of consanguinity governing marriage had become so complex that a marriage could be declared invalid if the spouses were found to be related in practically any degree by blood or spiritual relationship—that is, if a member of one family turned out to be a distant cousin or related to a godparent of the other.
Everyone knew the system needed reform; no one wanted to be the unpopular one who reformed it. The state of marriage was one of the oft-overlooked causes of the Reformation, and it was only with the Counter-Reformation and the Council of Trent that the Catholic Church came to terms with the issue.
But reformers like San Bernardino recognized the problem and steered the faithful toward St. Joseph as an example for fathers and a protector of the Church. In art, images of St. Joseph grew younger and more manly, making him a symbol of the active life in contrast to the contemplative life of Mary. After the Counter-Reformation, devotion to St. Joseph went hand-in-hand with the encouragement of devotion to family life and the Holy Family. St. Theresa of Avila adopted St. Joseph as a special patron of her Carmelites, and "José" became a newly popular name for baby boys among the Spanish. The revitalized St. Joseph, though, probably attains his highest honors in Poussin's Holy Family on the Steps.
Grace to Ascend
If Joseph here represents God the Father and this is indeed the Trinity, the symbolic meaning of the rest of the painting's apparatus should be clear. The overflowing fountain at the left, on Mary's side of the picture, signifies grace, and the basket of fruit at her feet the fruitfulness of that grace.
But behind the fountain is a tree. Can we deduce that this is the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the agent of mankind's fall? John offers Jesus an apple: it is the apple of our fall, and by Jesus' acceptance it is here redeemed through grace. By that redemption, brought about by the Trinity, and through the agency of the Holy Family, we can ascend—up the steps—to the heavenly Jerusalem above.
Mary Elizabeth Podles is the retired curator of Renaissance and Baroque art at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. She is the author of A Thousand Words: Reflections on Art and Christianity (St. James Press, 2023). She and her husband Leon, a Touchstone senior editor, have six children and live in Baltimore, Maryland. She is a contributing editor for Touchstone.
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