2-sided Jesus the Heavenly Gardener with Rose Tree Garden Flag

If Jesus is The Good Shepherd, He is also The Heavenly Gardener. Much less often portrayed in the Fine Arts than in the minor ones, the boy or the youth Jesus tending a garden was a motif popularized on late 19th-early 20th century devotional prints or, in common parlance, holy cards. While some series that included such images were clearly aimed at children, other images were printed with adults in mind. This is a version aimed at adults. + Jesus’s upbringing in Nazareth must have included growing things. His parables are replete with references to agricultural practices—from plowing to sowing wheat, from watering and weeding to reaping and harvesting as well as from pruning vines to crushing grapes. Though an artisan by trade, Jesus knew at least the basics of agrarian life possibly gleaned from watching neighboring farmers at work as a boy. Too, His home at Nazareth probably included a vegetable patch and, perhaps, even a flower garden. + Here, Jesus, assisted by two kneeling angels, is gardening. The angel on the left holds a watering can and is dressed in a white robe and golden yellow mantle. The angel on the right leans on a gardening spade and holds up a bowl of flower bulbs(?). He wears a light red garment loosely sashed over a long-sleeved, white tunic. Ready to work, he has pushed the wide sleeves of the outer garment way up onto his shoulders. + A cruciform-haloed Jesus, wearing a belted teal robe trimmed with simple gold embroidery, is fastening the leafless trunk of a rose tree to a tall, thin cross. Is the rose tree a metaphor for rearing a child in The Faith or, more broadly, for the Christian’s Faith Journey? That is, does being tied to the Cross result in growing straight and tall in righteousness to eventually burst into bloom? Perhaps. The scene calls to mind a passage from Proverbs 22:6, that is, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it”. While the scene has no direct parallel in Scripture, the motif’s popularity suggests it carries some deeper meaning than just being a pretty picture. (Cf. our MH 006 for a contemporary devotional print from another publisher.) + Image Credit (BK 017): Antique image in chromolithography captioned in German “Mach auch mein Kerz zum Gärtlein dir, Heg du drin deiner Blumen Zier” [“Make my heart a garden for you, too, adorned inside with your flowers”] from an early 20th-century devotional print (Series No. 1087), originally published by B. Kühlen, Mönchengladbach, Germany, from the designer’s private collection of religious ephemera. + Quotation (Proverbs 22:6): The Biblical passage is quoted from the World English Bible (WEB) which is in the public domain.