Guided Pathway

While some of the iconographic details of this image can be traced in Christian sources, Saxl suggests that Hildegard “goes a step further.” “Instead of drawing merely an analogical picture of a central figure surrounded by outer spheres she attempts to represent specific relations by adding radial lines” connecting head and feet with the sun and the moon—an element that for Saxl “departs from Christian iconography,” and which the art historian attributes to Hildegard’s knowledge of “late antique” or “hermetic” material, which had been recently described in Reitzenstein’s studies of ancient syncretism published in 1926 in the Studies of the Warburg Library edited by Saxl. Overall, images such as Hildegard’s portray the artful convergence of Christian and pagan sources into an analogical composite.