Jesse Tree
1548
Mosaic
St. Mark's Basilica
Usually a Jesse tree will include prophets who were thought to have foretold the birth of Jesus and his mother Mary. But this one includes only figures from the genealogy of St. Joseph in Matthew 1:1-17. At the bottom (not shown here) the tree grows out of Jesse, the father of David. At the top the Virgin Mary sits with the Christ Child on her knee.
Matthew divides the genealogy into three groups of fourteen ancestors. The first group preceded Jesse and so is not part of the tree. The second group, which goes from David to the Babylonian exile, is represented by the six men in the lower part of the tree. In the lower left corner are David and Solomon. On the branch across from them are Solomon's son Rehoboam (in the yellow tunic) and Jotham. Directly above those two are Abijah and Uzziah. Directly above David and Solomon are Asaph and Ahaz.
The third and final group is represented by Achim, who marks off the division by standing directly above Jesse and directly below Mary. He is the great-grandfather of Mathan, who in medieval lore was believed to be the grandfather of both Joseph and Mary. He stands at Mary's left offering her a scroll that presumably bears some words of praise. Behind him is his father Eleazar. On the branch across from him are his son Jacob (in red) and Jacob's son Joseph (in blue), "the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ."
In the margin are the words ex hac stirpe pia processit virgo maria que salvatorem genuit servando pudorem, "From this lineage arose the holy Virgin Mary, who gave birth to the Savior while retaining her chastity."
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Read more about images of Jesse.
Read about Mathan's place in the Holy Kinship.
Photographed at the basilica by Richard Stracke, shared under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.