Art to Heart Call to Worship

Cesar van Everdingen: An Allegory of Winter

©2002 by Jeff Dugan

From our twenty-first century perspective, this doesn’t look like a radical painting.  In fact, it looks pretty traditional.  It shows a young woman warming herself over a brazier full of glowing coals.  The title tells us it’s more than just a young woman trying to keep warm in the cold.  She’s supposed to be a “personification” of winter. 

Now, in a country as far north as Holland, winter is an important subject.  So important, that by the 17^th century, Dutch artists had established a tradition of portraying the winter in human form, as Everdingen does here.  But the traditional way was to depict winter as a feeble old man, emphasizing the death often brought by harsh weather, the way the cold affected stiff joints, and the barrenness of the fields.  The plight of the old man expressed the despair and hopelessness with which people naturally greeted the cold. 

So when Everdingen replaces the familiar old man with this young woman, it’s a radical departure from tradition.  He uses the woman’s youth, her vitality, and her implied fertility to suggest a new vision of winter.  Maybe it’s harsh and cold, but it need not seem so hopeless.  Because, after, all, every winter is followed by a spring.

In a way, this is why we assemble to worship today.  Tradition holds that the best we can do is to look out for number one, and when the getting is over, it’s over.  But we celebrate a radical departure from that tradition in Jesus Christ, who has shown us that we may suffer hardship and even death, but that our surrender to Him is sure to be followed by the rebirth of our souls. 

Let us worship the One who turns winter into spring!