Joseph's dream
A divine message
An angel touches the nimbus, the halo of the sleeping Joseph. He announces the death of Herod. This is interpreted as an invitation to return from Egypt to Palestine. However, the family does not return to Judea, to Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, but settles in Galilee, in the village of Nazareth, where Jesus grows up.
In his hand, the angel holds a long, very delicate sceptre, a sign that he is the bearer of a message. His tunic, a Roman garment, originally consisted of two rectangular pieces of fabric held together only with the help of brooches at the shoulders. More common was the tunic sewn together at the shoulders and sides, and later short sleeves became common. Also noteworthy are the narrow purple stripes of the toga, the sign of rank of Roman knights.
The composition of the painting is based on a Byzantine pictorial scheme, with the exception of the Western Roman bedstead and the fact that the angel appears to be standing on the bed and not hovering over it as in the Byzantine tradition. The modelling of the body in Western Romanesque painting is based on the decomposition of the body into individual parts. And this has achieved a concise, succinct clarity in the Lambach frescoes.
The bodies seem to consist of many segments, of curved rings separated by deep notches, similar to insect bodies; and the fanned robes often recall insect wings. The decomposition of form goes down to the smallest detail: a linear, graphic element takes the place of continuous modelling. Layered lines circumscribe the forms and work them out plastically. An abstract game that produces ornamental signs. Naturalistic imitation, as we know it from late antique representations, is replaced by signs.
The remnants of illusionistic, imitative light elevation techniques are also treated graphically: bright spots of light are surrounded by bundles of increasingly thin white lines and gradually fade away. These highly specialised forms also indicate that this is not a young form of art, but already at the beginning of the 12th century - a very old one.
