XXII. THE BAPTISM OF CHRIST 85

upon Him as a dove, in a stream of light, from God the Father, usually represented by a hand from Heaven. Two of John’s disciples stand behind him as spectators. Frequently the river-god of Jordan reclines with his oars in the corner.... In the Baptistery at Ravenna, the robe is supported, not by an angel, but by the river-deity Jordann (Iordanes?), who holds in his left hand a reed as his sceptre.”¹

Now in this mode of representing rivers there is something more than the mere Pagan tradition lingering through the wrecks of the Eastern Empire. A river, in the East and South, is necessarily recognized more distinctly as a beneficent power than in the West and North. The narrowest and feeblest stream is felt to have an influence on the life of mankind; and is counted among the possessions, or honoured among the deities, of the people who dwell beside it. Hence the importance given, in the Byzantine compositions, to the name and speciality of the Jordan stream. In the North such peculiar definiteness and importance can never be attached to the name of any single fountain. Water, in its various forms of streamlet, rain, or river, is felt as an universal gift of Heaven, not as an inheritance of a particular spot of earth. Hence, with the Gothic artists generally, the personality of the Jordan is lost in the green and nameless wave; and the simple rite of the Baptism is dwelt upon, without endeavouring, as Giotto has done, to draw the attention to the rocky shores of Bethabara and Ænon, or to the fact that “there was much water there.”²

¹ [Vol. i. pp. 88, 89. The italics and the insertion “(Iordanes?)” are Ruskin’s.]

² [“These things were done in Bethabara beyond Jordan” (John i. 28). “And John was also baptizing in Ænon, near to Salim, because there was much water there” (John iii. 23).]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]