The Iconography of Job Through the Centuries

Do artists who deal with biblical scenes study the texts that inspire them? At the same time, do scholars pay attention to artists as biblical interpreters? Eminent biblical scholar Samuel Terrien seeks to answer these questions in this first ever comprehensive survey of Jobian iconography from the third century to modern times. Through an analysis of the varying depictions of Job he finds that artists were not usually subservient to directives of religious authorities; rather, they often contradicted or preceded the exegetical trends of these commentators.

Terrien has selected more than 150 masterpieces from the approximate 800 images of Job that have escaped oblivion. His vast knowledge of the biblical text illumines the rich discussion, which ranges over artistic medium and time from the fresco of the Dura-Europos synagogue, the miniatures of the Patmos manuscript, the Doge Dandolo mosaic of the San Marco Baptistry in Venice, the mercy seats of Champeaux-en-Brie, the Sacra Allegoria of Giovannni Bellini in Florence, and Albrecht Dürer's Jabach Altarpiece in Cologne and Frankfurt, to the mystery soldier in Salvator Rosas Job in the Uffizi and the Job Geometricized à la Cimabuë by Marc Chagall in St.-Paul-de-Vence.

This rich interdisciplinary work reveals for the first time that Jobian artists saw in the ancient hero not only the prophet of a new life or the model of revolt and faith but also—and surprisingly—the intercessor of sexual reprobates, the patron saint of musicians, and, in modern times, the existential man.