Bulletin du Musée National de Varsovie (37.1996)

conforms especially to the spirit of Psalm 57, appealing to Providence and
describing the overcoming of the human weakness: “Be merciful unto me,
O God, be merciful unto me: for my soul trusteeth in thee: yea, in the shadow
of thy wings I will make my refuge, until these calamities be overpast. /I will cry
unto God most high; unto God that performeth all things for me. / He shall
send from heaven, and save me [...] / My soul is among lions: and I he even
among them [...] whose teeth are spears and arrows [...] My heart is fixed,
O God, my heart is fixed: I will sing and give praise. / Awake up, my glory;
awake psaltery and harp; I myself will awake early”. And similarly Psalm 91 :
“He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the
shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my
fortress: my God; in him will I trust [...] He shall cover thee with his feathers,
and under his wings shalt you trust [...] / Because thou hast made the Lord,
which is my refuge, even the Most High, thy habitation; There shall no evil
befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling. / For he shall give
his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways. / They shall bear thee
up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against the stone. /Thou shall tread
upon the lion and adder: the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample
under feet. [...]”

We can find in the foregoing passages a simultaneous association of several
elements which, in my opinion, allow us to explain more easily the meaning of
the fantastic sphinx-like animal, with a lion’s head and female breasts, which
- in keeping with the principles of “hidden symbolism” - forms the back of
David’s throne. This creature is simply too large, too prominent, and too
influential in the mood of the painting to play merely a decorative role.
Although Kobayashi-Sato seemed to be of similar opinion, she did not attempt
to interpret its presence in the Warsaw painting, and abandoned the question
whether it had a negative meaning (the lion in the Psalms as an evil creature)
or a positive one (the lion as an image of David prefiguring Christ, “the Tion
of the Tribe of Juda”).25 It is difficult to accept the positive meaning for this
bizarre, monstrous figure, alarmingly detached by its colour and shape from its
surroundings, and rather reminiscent of the apocalyptic beast: “his feet were as
the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion” (Rev. 13:2).26 With
this reference to both Psalms one can very naturally explain another point of
interpretation of the work, which might raise doubt: was there any particular
reason for ter Brugghen to depart from that separation of the “heavenly” and
“earthly” spheres, which seemed to be obligatory in contemporary paintings on

25 Y.Kobayashi-Sato, op. cit., pp.14, 16.

26 Cf. also the description of the first of the beasts from the vision of Daniel, as well as other evil
hybrid creatures in the Bible. The meaning of the motif of the Sphinx in representations of
biblical subjects in sixteenth-century Netherlandish and seventeenth-century Dutch art seems not
to be so unequivocal, and is sometimes simply neutral (see for example Heemskerck’s print
series). It is worth mentioning, however, that Solomon’s throne for example is usually adorned by
ordinary lions.

235