The Gospel of John in Pictures: John 1: Nathanael

I started writing about images depicting episodes from John's Gospel much earlier in the year.  Here is another.  Mark Cazalet's Nathaniel (asleep under the fig tree)* does and doesn't portray a visionary moment from John.  Philip, already a disciple of Jesus, persuades Nathanael to come with him to meet Jesus:

When Jesus saw Nathanael approaching, he said of him, Here is a true Israelite, in whom there is nothing false.
How do you know me? Nathanael asked. Jesus answered, I saw you while you were still under the fig-tree before Philip called you.
Then Nathanael declared, Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel.
Jesus said, You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig-tree. You shall see greater things than that.
He then added, I tell you the truth, you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.  John 1:47-51

Unlike Cazalet's painting the narrative doesn't suggest that Nathanael was asleep but perhaps what Cazalet's image is doing is intensifying and compressing into a single 'moment' some of the allusions already playing out in the narrative.  Jesus' statement about 'the angels of God ascending and descending' sends his readers back to Genesis 28:10-22 and Jacob's dream at Bethel of a stairway to heaven, with angels ascending and descending on it; in John's gospel Jesus himself is the stairway to heaven.  And perhaps by depicting Nathanael as asleep under the fig-tree, Cazalet gives us a visual reminder of sleeping Jacob, where the text of the gospel gives us a written one.

* The conditions of use of the The Methodist Church Collection of Modern Christian Art mean that I can't use the image directly within this blog but I hope that you'll follow the link and appreciate both this painting, and the many other beautiful things in the collection.