The blue color of the Son’s robe symbolizes divinity, the brown color represents earth, his humanity, and the gold speaks of kingship of God. The unity of the Trinity’s three beings expresses love between all things: “That they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” (John 17:21) The wings of two angels, the Father and the Son are interwoven. Finally, the mountain is a symbol of the spiritual ascent, which we accomplish with the help of the Holy Spirit. The Oak is located in the center, above the angel who symbolizes Jesus. The Oak of Mamre can be interpreted as the tree of life, and it serves as a reminder of the Jesus’s death on the cross and his subsequent resurrection, which opened the way to eternal life. The starting point of the divine administration is the creative Will of God, therefore Rublev places the Abraham’s house above the corresponding angel’s head. The nature of each of the three is revealed through their symbolic attributes, i.e. He blesses the cup, yet his hand is painted in a distance, as if he passes the cup to the central angel, who represents Jesus Christ, who in turn blesses the cup as well and accepts it with a bow as if saying “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. The left angel symbolizes God the Father. Around the cup, which is placed on the table, the silent dialogue of gestures takes place. It hints at the crucifixion sacrifice and serves as the reminder of the Eucharist (the left and the right angels’ figures make a silhouette that resembles a cup). The impactful center of the composition is the cup with the calf’s head. At the same time, the angels are not inserted into the circle, but create it instead, thus our eyes can’t stop at any of the three figures and rather dwell inside this limited space. In Rublev’s icon, the form that most clearly represents the idea of the consubstantiality of the Trinity is a circle. “The gestures of angels, smooth and restrained, demonstrate the sublime nature of their conversation.” The silent communion of the three angels is the center of the composition. The angels were depicted as talking, not eating. He did not paint Abraham, Sarah, the scene of calf’s slaughter, nor did he give any details on the meal. In his effort to uncover the doctrine of the Trinity, Rublev abandoned most of the traditional plot elements that were typically included in the paintings of the Abraham and Sarah’s Hospitality story. Art critics believe that Andrei Rublev’s icon was created in accordance with this concept. The subject of The Trinity received various interpretations at different time periods, but by the 19th to 20th centuries the consensus among scholars was the following: the three angels who visited Abraham represented the Christian Trinity, “one God in three persons” – the Father, the Son (Jesus Christ), and the Holy Spirit. One of the angels told Abraham that Sarah would soon give birth to a son. “When he saw them, Abraham ran from the tent door to meet them and bowed himself to the earth.” Abraham ordered a servant-boy to prepare a choice calf, and set curds, milk and the calf before them, waiting on them, under a tree, as they ate. It says that the biblical Patriarch Abraham “was sitting at the door of his tent in the heat of the day by the Oak of Mamre” and saw three men standing in front of him, who in the next chapter were revealed as angels. The icon is based on a story from the Book of Genesis called Abraham and Sarah’s Hospitality. At the time of Rublev, the Holy Trinity was the embodiment of spiritual unity, peace, harmony, mutual love and humility. The Trinity depicts the three angels who visited Abraham at the Oak of Mamre (Genesis 18:1–8), but the painting is full of symbolism and is interpreted as an icon of the Holy Trinity. It is his most famous work and the most famous of all Russian icons, and it is regarded as one of the highest achievements of Russian art. The Trinity, also called “The Hospitality of Abraham,” is an icon created by Russian painter Andrei Rublev in the 15th century.
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