Friday, September 13, 2013

Habakkuk Hanging by His Hair

Having posted the selection from Greek Daniel describing the legend of Habakkuk being hauled through the air by his hair to give supper to Daniel in the lion's den, I then thought: There's bound to be some Renaissance artist who has painted that. And of course there is. A fifteenth century French manuscript:

Daniel dans la fosse aux lions

Habakkuk in that illustration seems like he's done this before: just coolly hanging with his picnic basket in one hand and his pot of soup in the other, like someone riding a bus to a potluck. [The scroll, incidentally, is Daniel 14:37: "Daniel, take the food that God has sent you."]

I can't find any public domain version of it, but at this link you can see a print of a painting of it by sixteenth century Venetian Mannerist, Paris Bordone, which is a very interesting composition. [Added Later: The website seems to be a bit unreliable. Here is Google's cache of the image.]