Master Radovan: Joseph's Dream and the Slaughter of the Innocents
Mid-13th century
Relief
West tympanum, Cathedral of St. Lawrence, Trogir, Croatia
Joseph can be identified by the characteristic cane with a half-moon handle that he holds here and in the scenes of the Flight into Egypt and Nativity. Also, this scene follows immediately to the right of the Adoration of the Magi, following the sequence in Matthew 2:9-13.
On the right side of this photograph are four of the six angels carrying the souls of the slaughtered children to Heaven. I have not seen other examples of this way of referencing the Slaughter of the Innocents, so the artist's choice may have arisen from the west portal's iconographic program (frightening images below, reassuring images above). The swaddling may have been suggested by images such as the mosaic in the baptistery at St. Marks, Venice, where the souls of the deceased are pictured as swaddled babies carried to Heaven by their guardian angels (Vio, 155).
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Photographed at the site by Richard Stracke, shared under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.