Finding Moses & the Adoration of Jesus (original) (raw)

Finding Moses & the Adoration

Designer: George Hedgeland

Norwich Cathedral

1854

Pharaoh’s daughter finding Moses in the bulrushes, the subject of the bottom light, here functions as the type or prefiguration of the Adoration, when the three wise men or Magi find the newborn Jesus. In each case royal figures find an infant who, when an adult, will teach his people God’s law. The other two vertical panels at center and right make clear the typological — or what Victorians would call “typical” — relation between the infant Moses and the infant Jesus. Nonetheless, the finding of Moses is hardly a commonplace type, much less one that scripture supposedly authenticated, such as Moses striking the rock, the brazen serpent, and Jonah’s three days inside the whale. This use of the finding of Moses as a type suggests how widespread was the habit of thinking in terms of type and antitype, prefiguration and fulfillment. — George P. Landow

Related material

• Complete window
• Brazen serpent & risen Christ
• Proclaiming Old Law & New
• The Jesus College windows
• Biblical types — an introduction
• The Brazen Serpent

Photographer: Colin Price