Sociable Hermits

One of the paintings that caught my eye during this trip's visit to the Uffizi galleries was a long horizontal painting (oil on panel, 75 cm tall and 207 cm wide) from around 1420, attributed to Fra' Angelico. It depicts the life of hermits in the early centuries of Christianity, and they are the most un-hermitlike hermits I've ever imagined. Just to be sure that there wasn't some meaning I was unaware of, I checked and found "hermit" defined, yes indeed, as "one that retires from society and lives in solitude ... specifically: a Christian ascetic living alone in an isolated place in order to pursue a life devoted to religious exercise," which is consonant with my understanding.

These monks are a busy community. Even if one posits that some proportion of the scenes are supposed to tell different parts of the stories of various saints--for example, the old monk being carried on a litter by other monks, down a hill to where he dies and is mourned, or the woman in red attempting to seduce a monk and then shown a second time fleeing when he rejects her--there are throughout the picture scenes of monks conversing or working in gardens or carrying litters or otherwise engaged in activities in small groups, definitely not isolating themselves for contemplation and prayer. After all, a saint has to eat... so he has to tend his garden, travel occasionally, and interact with others from time to time for a variety of reasons. This, then, is a comprehensive view of pretty much any scene in which a hermit might have found himself.

"Thebaid Hermits," by Fra' Angelico (?), ca. 1420.

The activity and variety of the many little scenes makes for a charming picture where the viewer keeps finding new details to enjoy, such as the numerous wild animals--deer (being chased and being ridden), a lion (pulling a chariot), a dragon (being exorcised or otherwise defeated by the powers of good, in the first picture of the grid below) --and the several winds that fill the sails of the various boats.

Fra' Angelico would have known all the aspects that might make up a monk's life, as he was himself a Dominican friar. This painting is the only complete surviving example of a genre that was apparently popular in the 15th century, purporting to depict the lives of ascetics from the first and second centuries A.D.; the name Thebaid refers to a desert area near Thebes (in a Roman-dominated area of Egypt) that offered rocky terrain with caves where hermits apparently liked to live.