The Yale University Art Museum is arguably the oldest depiction of Our Lady. We are talking about wall paintings from the ancient city of Dura Europos, located in the territory of modern Syria. This image is well known. True, this scene was usually called by art historians "Christ and the Samaritan woman at the well."
Moreover, in the image, only the figure of a Samaritan woman has been preserved, drawing water from a well. However, the American scholar Michael Peppard, a specialist in early Christian architecture and iconography from Fordham University (New York), suggested that in reality this is a scene of the Annunciation, and we see an image of the Mother of God herself, writes the author of an article published on Tuesday by Meduza.io.
The existence of the ancient city was learned in Europe at the very end of the 19th century. The first excavations took place in 1920, the largest studies were carried out in the period from 1928 to 1937. In 1986, work resumed thanks to the joint Franco-Syrian project Mission Franco-Syrienne dʼEuropos-doura (MFSED). For a number of reasons, the finds from Dura Europos were scattered around the world: something is kept in Damascus, something in Paris, and the murals from the house church are in the museum of Yale University in Connecticut.
The murals referred to in the article come from the so-called "Home Church", which has been reconstructed by specialists from Yale University since the early 1930s. The church was located in a house that, according to researchers, belonged to one of the wealthy residents of the ancient city, according to an article from the "Orthodox Encyclopedia".
The structure of the house is traditionally Roman. The premises are grouped around an open columnar atrium, in the center of which was an oval impluvium with a stepped descent along the perimeter. Opposite the entrance was a tablinum with a table in the center, where the family gathered and various ceremonies were performed. It is believed that Christians could use the pool as a baptistery, and a bishop sat in the tablinum.
The frescoes of the "Home Church" were executed in 232-233 or between 232 and 256. This is the oldest known painting cycle of Christian art, which decorates the premises for worship and has a single iconographic program.
This church is considered the oldest found so far, and therefore everything that is found in it is of particular interest to historians of early Christianity. Clark Hopkins (1895-1976), head of the expedition to Dura-Europos in the 1930s, in his book "The Discovery of Dura-Europos" spoke of the tremendous shock he and his colleagues experienced when they saw the open frescoes, according to the publication of the Meduza portal.io.
Hopkins and other members of the expedition were convinced that the murals combined features of the Eastern and Western iconographic traditions, and assumed that their unknown author tried to reproduce at least one plot of each of the synoptic Gospels on the walls, although later it became clear that they survived only a few fragments of frescoes.
Promotional video:
The painting with the woman at the well is also only partially preserved. Hopkins and all subsequent researchers believed that only the left side of the scene survived, and the right, with Christ talking to the Samaritan woman, has not survived to this day. Later, the same Hopkins pointed out that in the Roman catacombs - the most important source of knowledge about early Christian art - often only one figure was depicted, according to which the viewer was supposed to catch the Gospel story. So, perhaps, the artist from Dura-Europos limited himself to only one Samaritan woman.
The depiction of a woman at the well did not raise questions for 80 years, until the art historian Michael Peppard, a researcher of the culture of the late Roman Empire and, in particular, the ancient city of Dura Europos, did not prepare a monograph on the House Church. Peppard was skeptical about the assumption that the figure of Christ did not survive, and recalled the traditions of Eastern iconography, where compositions like the paintings from Dura Europos represent the scene of the Annunciation. On them, Mary stands at the well and listens to the voice of an angel announcing that she will conceive a Savior according to the word of God.
The iconographic plot “Annunciation at the Well” is associated with an apocryphal text called “The Proto-Gospel of Jacob,” which contains the following lines: “And taking the jug, [Mary] went to fetch water; and she heard a voice proclaiming: Rejoice, blessed one! The Lord is with You; Blessed are You between wives. And She began to look around to find out where this voice came from. " This text, quoted by Meduza.io, dates from the second half of the 2nd century. Despite the fact that the "Proto-Gospel" remained an apocryphal, in the East (and, in particular, in Byzantium) it was very well known and appreciated. It is with the lines quoted above that the image of the Annunciation at the well is associated.
Based on iconographic examples, Michael Peppard suggested that the house church in Dura Europos had an image of the Annunciation at the well. Since the dating of this room is very accurate (in 256 the city was abandoned forever by the inhabitants), the painting is perhaps the oldest image of the Virgin known to us.
Until Peppard published his hypothesis, the oldest image of the Virgin was considered a fresco from the Roman catacombs of Priscilla, which depicts Mary with the Child and a male figure (she is interpreted as the prophet Isaiah or the soothsayer Balaam). This painting, like the fragment from Dura Europos, dates back to the 3rd century, but a number of modern researchers indicate that the fresco from the Priscilla catacombs was heavily restored at the beginning of the 20th century, and there is reason to believe that it was "corrected": for example, in the first drawing, the male figure pointed to a woman and a child, and in the latest photographs, the alleged prophet raises his hand to heaven. It is believed that this fresco is still a pagan funerary portrait of a mother and child, not associated with Christians.