Images of the Divine Child

[aras-image:5Df.025,,8,,,Figure 15 The Nativity of Christ.]
[aras-image:5Fk.053,,8,,,Figure 16 Adoration of the Christ Child.]

The birth of the son is most familiar in Christian cultures in paintings of the Nativity of Christ. A mosaic from the Capella Palantina in Palermo shows the Mother, and the Child in swaddling clothes, in a jagged cave in the upper center of the painting surrounded by the animals and the visitors and the heavenly host. Below to the right we see the Child being bathed by two women (Figures 15 and 16).
 
In a tradition far removed in time and place, a Navajo Sandpainting pictures the hero of the legend clothed in flint armor surrounded by plants as he comes through "the place of emergence," the sisapu, the navel of the earth into this fourth world, from the three worlds below. This is seen in the Sandpainting as a circle in the center with the plants around it in the four cardinal directions.
 

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