The return from Egypt
Another divine command
Two themes are depicted on the east wall. On the left, you can see Joseph's dream in which the angel delivers to him the command to return from Egypt to Palestine. The right half of the wall shows the scene of the return from Egypt. In front on the right, Joseph strides, followed by his son Jakobus with shouldered provisions for the journey. The final scene is Mary with the Child, riding on a donkey. The type of picture, as well as Joseph's dream to the left, is identical to the Byzantine scheme for the flight into Egypt, with the exception of the female figure on the far left.
According to the Gospel of Matthew, the family had to flee from Bethlehem to Egypt after Jesus' birth on the command of an angel, which Joseph received in a dream, because King Herod had all the infants in Bethlehem killed out of fear of the prophesied newborn King of the Jews who would oust him. However, this infanticide in Bethlehem is not documented in other sources. Later, the family moved back to Palestine on divine instruction, which Joseph again received in a dream. However, they did not settle in Judea, where Bethlehem is located, but in Galilee in the village of Nazareth, where Jesus grew up.
What about the position of the artist in the Middle Ages, since we are talking about Byzantine models and the implementation of religious programmes that were not worked out by the artists but by theologians? In the case of the frescoes at Lambach, Adalbero could have been the author of the programme, also because the scene with the magi refers to a Latin magician's play from the early 11th century, the manuscript of which has been in Lambach since the foundation of the monastery.
Artifex - Latin: he who knows how to make something expertly referred in the Middle Ages and up to the time of the Renaissance to the craftsman who made all kinds of pictures and handicrafts. The word artista - artist did not exist in the Middle Ages or in the preceding epochs - not even in the Renaissance.
An example of this is Vasari, who in his biographies collection called the Florentine painters and sculptors of his day artefici del disegno - and among them were masters such as Titian, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael.
The artifex did not have to attend school, but in any case had to complete a studio course of study as an apprentice and earn his master's degree. The apprentice learned from an established master. Hence the myriad of phrases that make this principle clear: ''fu discepolo di Piero della Francesca...'' - ''was a disciple of Piero della Francesca ...". All artifices began as apprentices in a bottegha - a workshop: Giotto with Cimabue, Leonardo da Vinci with Andrea del Verrocchio. In Florence alone there were about forty "botteghe di maestri di prospettiva" - "workshops of the masters of perspective".
The position of the artifices was modest and not associated with any special dignities. At first, they were nothing more than producers of utilitarian objects and united in guilds with fixed statutes. The isolated artist working for himself in the solitude of his studio - this figure did not exist.
Only a few names of artifices from the Middle Ages have survived. The term artista - the artist as we understand it today, which only developed in the late Renaissance - about 600 years ago - did not exist in the Middle Ages.
The medieval conception of art did not allow the personal signature of the artifices to be discovered in the work. The undervaluing of the craft arts, such as those of sculptors or painters, which was common at the time, did not allow for any claim to personal fame. Nevertheless, the artist-craftsmen of the Middle Ages had a sense of dignity, although religious and social circumstances helped to foster attitudes of humility and a tendency towards anonymity.
It must be remembered that works of visual art were always part of a communal work such as a church or a palace. The maximum personal testimony that artist-craftsmen could leave of themselves were the identifying marks on the stones they worked on. The miniature painter was usually a monk and the master mason or fresco painter a craftsman bound to the guild. Both were as good as always bound either to a monastic or an aristocratic life. And as monastery or court artists, they were certainly appreciated.
To bring us back to the present: even today, the inattentive viewer who does not pay attention to the opening or closing credits of a film tends to regard it as an anonymous work. It is not the author, director and film crew, but the plot and actors that remain in the memory.
