Souffleur, what is the meaning of 'prefiguration'?
SOUFFLEUR
Prefiguration
Art, like all domains, has its own vocabulary. In ‘Souffleur’, M staff explain and provide background to technical terms that may sound familiar to you but for which you never knew, or maybe have forgotten, the exact meaning.
“At the bottom left, for example, you can see the Jewish Passover meal. After their exile in Egypt, Yahweh required Jews to slaughter a lamb, roast it and eat it with unleavened bread. The platter on which you see the lamb is the antithesis of the empty platter in the middle panel where Christ himself assumed the role of the sacrificial lamb.”
“At the bottom right, Bouts painted the prophet Elijah in the desert. He is depicted with an earthen cup topped with a loaf of bread which, again, is a prefigruation of the Eucharist. Bouts was the first to present Elijah’s story that way.”
“Not that he came up with all that himself. The contract with the patron - the Brotherhood of the Blessed Sacrament - from 1464 has survived and it describes the scenes he was to paint on the shutters. It also says he had to be advised by two theologians from the university. These included ensuring that Bouts rendered the prefigurations correctly.”
