Iconography of the Day: Mousetrap

Artist:
Robert Campin and Workshop

Origin:
South Netherlandish, Tournai

Title:
Triptych with the Annunciation (also known as the "Merode Altarpiece")

Date:
ca. 1425–1430

Medium:
Oil on oak
Dimensions:
With triptych open: 25 3/8 x 46 3/8 in. (64.5 x 117.8 cm)
Central panel: 25 1/4 x 24 7/8 in. (64.1 x 63.2 cm)
Side panels: 25 3/8 x 10 3/4 in. (64.5 x 27.3 cm)

Current location:
The Cloisters Collection, Metropolitan Museum, NY

Acquired by the Met in 1956

Classification:
Painting-Panel

Accession Number:
56.70a–c

Excerpt from Meyer Schapiro, "'Muscipula Diaboli,' The Symbolism of the Mérode Altarpiece," repr. in Late Antique, Early Christian, and Mediaeval Art: p. 1: In the Mérode Altarpiece by the Master of Flémalle, the figure of Joseph appears in a wing beside the Annunciation as an artisan who fashions mousetraps.... [T]his detail of the mousetrap is more than a whimsical invention of the artist, suggested by Joseph's occupation. It has also a theological meaning that was present to the minds of Christians in the Middle Ages, and could be related by them to the sense of the main image of the triptych. St. Augustine, considering the redemption of man by Christ's sacrifice, employs the metaphor of the mousetrap to explain the necessity of the incarnation. The human flesh of Christ is a bait for the devil who, in seizing it, brings about his own ruin. "The devil exulted when Christ died, but by this very death of Christ the devil was vanquished, as if he had swallowed the bait in the mousetrap. He rejoiced in Christ's death, like a bailiff of death. What he rejoiced in was then his own undoing. The cross of the Lord was the devil's mousetrap; the bait by which he was caught was the Lord's death...."

The connection of the mousetrap in the picture with the theological metaphor is strengthened by the extraordinary way in which the artist has rendered the Annunciation in the neighboring panel. Instead of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove, usual in images of the subject, he has represented a tiny naked figure of a child bearing a cross and descending toward the Virgin along the beams of light which have just passed through a window.... [T]he child was probably understood by the pious spectator as a symbol of the incarnation to come, just as the cross carried by this figure symbolized the Crucifixion and Redemption. Here, too, as in the Joseph scene, doctrine, metaphor, and reality are condensed in a single object. The beams of light penetrating the window are not simply a phenomenal detail of everyday life, which later Dutch artists were to represent more subtly and picturesquely in their genre paintings of a woman reading or sewing in her room (see centerpiece: Mary); the passage of the rays through the glass is a characteristic mediaeval image of the miraculous insemination and birth. In mediaeval poetry, in mystical literature, in hymns and mystery plays, in Latin and the vernacular, this simile recurs:

As a ray of the sun Through a window can pass. And yet no hurt is done The translucent glass So, but more subtly, Of a mother untried, God, the son of God, Comes forth from his bride.

Gerson's account of Joseph is not irrelevant to this detail of the Mérode panel. In the first place, he stresses Joseph's occupation as a carpenter ...[H]e disserts at length on the virtue of this humble craft which, together with the Virgin's labor as a weaver, assures his humility, his moral dignity, and livelihood:

"O what a marvel of deep humility --thus God's graciousness and humanity was such that he willed to be subject ot a carpenter, a charlier or woodcutter, and to a poor weaver or silk worker. [Joseph] devoted himself to work and toil, so as to be busied well and earn a just and honest living, and gain the blessing the Prophet speaks of when he says: 'Because you eat the toil of your hands (that is, what your hands earn) you are blessed and it will go well with you (Psalm 127).' Thus Joseph in youth took to carpentry, to making carts or sheds or windows or ships or houses, though he was of an honorable and noble line in Nazareth, contrary to the men and women who don't want to work and think it shameful or slavery, and so are often poor and evil in the world and more to God, for such persons are commonly slaves to all the vices..."