How&Why Facebook ad: “Baby Jesus Has Just Submitted His Tax Return.”

About this ad

Meta Ad Library ID

1575378253581055

Platforms

Facebook, Instagram and Audience Network

Relaunches

0

EU reach

517,347

How we count

Ad text

Baby Jesus Has Just Submitted His Tax Return. He sits on Mary’s lap like a miniature professor: solemn, alert, distant, with a high forehead, large halo and expression that says, “No, I shan’t be playing with your wooden donkey, Mother. I am busy contemplating the Divine Revelation.” Why did medieval artists depict Baby Jesus like that? They were not idiots. They knew what infants looked like. It’s because this particular baby is busy doing serious theological work. In old Christian thought, Jesus was viewed as travel-sized divine Wisdom from birth – fully there, fully wise, fully in charge, eternal, all-knowing, even while small enough to fit on Mary’s lap. The ‘scroll + blessing + wise little face’ combo is medieval shorthand for: This is not just a cute baby – this is GOD! Medieval art was about worship, ritual, and belief, not individual artistic creativity. It had to be understandable to churchgoers who had little access to books and could not read. Religious paintings were symbols designed to remind viewers about God, obedience and their eternal souls – and paying their full tithes to the church every month. Baby Jesus looks like a tiny old man because the image symbolised all of the above in a body eighteen inches tall. And if that made him look like he was born ready to chair a committee, that’s because, in the medieval visual language, he sort of did.