Transfiguration

The occasion when Christ manifested his divine nature to the disciples Peter, James and John. He took them up a mountain—traditionally Mt Tabor in Galilee—and in their presence became transfigured: his face shone like the sun and his clothes became dazzling white. Moses and Elijah appeared on either side of him and conversed with him. A bright cloud overshadowed them and a voice from heaven said 'This is my son.' The apostles fell prostrate before the vision. Moses and Elijah, symbols of the Old Testament Law and Prophets, are portrayed in the manner of patriarchs, old and gray-bearded. Moses may hold a tablet of the Law or, in earlier Renaissance examples, have rays of light sprouting like horns from his head. Of the apostles Peter, with a short, curly, gray beard, is usually in the center. John is the youngest of the three. The theme is represented in two ways. The earlier type, rarely found after the 16th cent., shows Christ standing on the 'mountain'—generally merely a low eminence or hillock—between Moses and Elijah, while the apostles half-recline at his feet, perhaps shielding their eyes from the brightness. The alternative type, more dramatic or 'devotional' in treatment, of which Raphael's picture in the Vatican is the most famous example, shows the Savior floating in the air, as in an 'ascension.' The shining radiance—the 'bright cloud'—that surrounds him is reflected on the other five figures. The lower half of the picture may separately depict, by way of contrast, the episode which immediately followed Christ's descent from the mountain in which the disciples are engaged in argument with the Jewish scribes, and a father brings his epileptic son to Christ to be cured. The subject is found as early as the 6th cent. in the art of the Eastern Church where, from that time, the Transfiguration was celebrated as a feast. In the West the feast was officially instituted in the 15th cent. and was especially fostered by the Carmelites whose traditional founder was Elijah.